INGOs in the Mirror: Critical Reflections of Practitioners Implementing Psychosocial Support Programs

The purpose of this qualitative research is to learn from the professional wisdom of practitioners involved in implementing school-based psychosocial support in conflict-affected contexts. Practitioners from four different International Non-governmental Organizations (INGO) working in three different contexts—the Congo Basin region, the South Asia region, and the Sudan region—reflect on the concepts and realities of the psychosocial support models that their organizations use. A common theme emerging from these interviews is that the approach to psychosocial support has the potential to do harm. The practitioners provide real examples of the ways in which harm may occur and their possible causes. These causes include the lack of a formal venue for critical reflection within their organizations, internal disagreements between Child Protection and Education departments, an aid architecture that can foster competition between INGOs for funding, and the lack of commitment or organizational capacity to valorize local knowledge. I conclude with considerations for INGOs to reduce the potential harm produced by school-based psychosocial support programs in conflict-affected contexts

Not Just for Americans: The Case for Expanding Reciprocal Tax Exemptions for Foreign Investments by Pension Funds

From provision of OAS, GIS and CPP to the favourable taxation of Registered Pension Plans and RRSPs , Canada’s government has long focused policy efforts on better ensuring that working Canadians approach retirement with sufficient income supports in place. If the government wants to continue to move in this direction by trying to help maximize returns to pension plan members, while decreasing the portfolio risks faced by those pension plans, one step it could consider would be: Expanding the exemption for withholding taxes on foreign dividends and interest earned by pension plans. The exemptions for foreign interest and dividends are already available to U.S. investments, part of a reciprocal arrangement spelled out in the Canada-U.S. Tax Convention. Those exemptions allow U.S. and Canadian pension funds to participate in cross-border investments that would otherwise be too costly. Pension funds rely on international investments to optimize diversification and returns. And tax conventions between countries are typically designed to protect investors from the participating countries from being double taxed by both their resident country and the foreign jurisdiction where they invest. This good policy has certainly been Canada’s model in its numerous bilateral tax treaties. But while the U.S.-Canada Tax Convention extends the benefit of tax exemption to dividends and interest earned from cross-border investments by tax-exempt pension funds, when it comes to all other countries, there is no equivalent result. Yet, aspects of these same exemptions exist in certain bilateral treaties between other countries in treaties with one another. That certainly suggests that there are other trading partners, besides just the U.S., that are open to the possibility of these particular exemptions. If Canada could negotiate broadening these exemptions to countries beyond the United States, it would realize important advantages with little cost. By not moving further in this direction for non-U.S. foreign interest and dividend income of Canadian pension funds, these funds are left with lower benefits or higher contribution rates for pension plan members. It is also inevitably distorting the investment decisions being made by pension fund managers, producing a negative impact on risk-adjusted returns to their portfolios. While Canada may lose some revenue by forsaking some withholding tax, that would almost certainly be outweighed by the total economic gains as pension returns increase and, in reciprocal arrangements, Canada becomes more welcoming to foreign capital. With a number of countries already evidently open to the idea of tax exemptions for foreign interest and dividends earned by pension funds, and the economic effects for doing so overwhelmingly positive, the Canadian government should seriously consider getting started on negotiating reciprocal arrangements for cross-border pension fund investment with other countries

Insights from Global Project Managers: Career Advice for Successful International Assignments

Qualitative analysis techniques were used to identify recurring themes from project manager interview summaries undertaken by 120 project management students. The themes and the resulting conceptual framework provide evidence for the factors that support the development of successful global project managers. Such factors were found to include taking the initiative to acquire an in-depth understand the local environment and to develop culture and language competence

X-ray photoelectron and infrared spectroscopies of quartz samples of contrasting toxicity

An exploratory XPS and FTIR investigation of the surfaces of bulk quartz powders widely used in toxicological studies (DQ12 and Min-U-Sil 5) was carried with the aim of correlating surface features with toxicity as reflected by indicators of biological response. Some patches of amorphous silica were identified as well as varying amounts of calcium but none of these features correlated with biological response. No evidence of widely-quoted surface silanol (SiOH) structures was found in this investigation and the possibility that FTIR artefacts have been previously misidentified as silanol structures is discussed

Creep stability of the proposed AIDA mission target 65803 Didymos: I. Discrete cohesionless granular physics model

As the target of the proposed Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission, the near-Earth binary asteroid 65803 Didymos represents a special class of binary asteroids, those whose primaries are at risk of rotational disruption. To gain a better understanding of these binary systems and to support the AIDA mission, this paper investigates the creep stability of the Didymos primary by representing it as a cohesionless self-gravitating granular aggregate subject to rotational acceleration. To achieve this goal, a soft-sphere discrete element model (SSDEM) capable of simulating granular systems in quasi-static states is implemented and a quasi-static spin-up procedure is carried out. We devise three critical spin limits for the simulated aggregates to indicate their critical states triggered by reshaping and surface shedding, internal structural deformation, and shear failure, respectively. The failure condition and mode, and shear strength of an aggregate can all be inferred from the three critical spin limits. The effects of arrangement and size distribution of constituent particles, bulk density, spin-up path, and interparticle friction are numerically explored. The results show that the shear strength of a spinning self-gravitating aggregate depends strongly on both its internal configuration and material parameters, while its failure mode and mechanism are mainly affected by its internal configuration. Additionally, this study provides some constraints on the possible physical properties of the Didymos primary based on observational data and proposes a plausible formation mechanism for this binary system. With a bulk density consistent with observational uncertainty and close to the maximum density allowed for the asteroid, the Didymos primary in certain configurations can remain geo-statically stable without including cohesion.Comment: 66 pages, 24 figures, submitted to Icarus on 25/Aug/201