A gender strategy for pro-poor climate change mitigation

The Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Research Program (CCAFS) of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Resources (CGIAR) CCAFS “seeks to overcome the threats to agriculture and food security in a changing climate, exploring new ways of helping vulnerable rural communities adjust to global changes in climate.”1 The CCAFS Gender Strategy (Ashby, et al. 2012) makes the case for gender analysis as critical to increased production, improved outcomes for poverty alleviation and increased well-being, and a fairer distribution of burdens and benefits in agriculture among women and men. This report proposes a gender strategy for climate change mitigation and the promotion of low emissions agriculture—the focus of CCAFS Theme 3: Pro-Poor Climate Change Mitigation. Specifically, we provide a strategy for assuring that mitigation efforts meet the goals of poverty alleviation and food security, and do so in ways that benefit poor women materially, personally and socially. We focus on women because of their historical and contemporary disadvantages, and recognize that benefits for women are generally broader and more durable to the extent men embrace those benefits, whether out of their own material interests or from commitments to family and community well-being. Although CCAFS has separated mitigation, adaptation, and risk management into three distinct research themes, we suggest these must be addressed in an integrated way to meet farmers’ needs. Farmers are primarily concerned with their well-being and that of their families and neighbors, rather than larger global environmental issues. Many also hold a ‘landscape-view’ of their home places in which water and energy sources, forests and grasslands, farms and fallows are all considered in relation to one another in contributing to farmers’ livelihood strategies, even though strategies for adaptation may emphasize one part of the landscape and mitigation another (Shames and Scherr, 2011). Initiatives to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions should therefore ideally enhance and at least not harm adaptation and risk management. Similarly adaptation should aim to minimize GHG emissions where possible

Texas Transportation Researcher

Quarterly magazine of the Texas Transportation Institute discussing the research, professional, and service activities of the organization as well as general research and innovations related to transportation in Texas

Texas Transportation Researcher

Quarterly magazine of the Texas Transportation Institute discussing the research, professional, and service activities of the organization as well as general research and innovations related to transportation in Texas

When should customers control service delivery? Implications for service design

What do a Mongolian stir-fry restaurant and a medical lab providing home testing solutions have in common? They are both innovative services that base their success on customers controlling part of the service delivery. These providers allow service tasks to be performed by the customers as a means of shaping the overall experience and not strictly as a means of "outsourcing" the service. Motivated by such practices, we explore whether and how should providers allocate the control of different tasks of their service to the customers. We model services as multi-step processes with each step affecting customers' experience at other steps. At certain steps the provider may hold an “expert" role and be more capable of performing than the customers, whereas at other steps she holds an “administrative" role and is less capable of performing than the customers. We distinguish between routine services, where the service outcome must conform to standardized specifications, and non-routine services, where the value of the service outcome relies on subjective dimensions. We show that the optimal design is determined by an economically intuitive rule whereby the provider controls the steps based on the marginal benefit she can derive compared to self-service. For routine services, this rule translates to managing “blocks" of steps because the provider benefits from containing the volatility of the experiences across the service even when this implies the provision of service steps with a negative marginal benefit, i.e., steps which she is less capable of performing than the customers. Instead, in non-routine services providers should focus on the value advantage they can ensure through a "core provision" even if this implies forgoing control of steps for which they are more capable of performing than the customers and from which they can derive positive marginal benefit. This implies that in non-routine services the provider exercises more control up to a certain process length; beyond that she delegates more steps to the customers. When customers differ in their abilities to perform the different steps, the provider may offer a service line. Service lines facilitate better segmentation than a single service offering, but their economic benefit exhibits an inverted “U-shaped" relationship with respect to the number of steps that a service comprises. Finally, we find that competition between two providers who differ in their capabilities to perform a service results in service design differentiation where the more capable provider offers a higher-end "focused service" against a lower-end "super-service" offered from the less capable provider

Toxicology Studies on Lewisite and Sulfur Mustard Agents: Mutagenicity of Lewisite in the Salmonella Histidine Reversion Assay Final Report

The mutagenic potential of lewisite was evaluated in the standard plate incorporation method and by the preincubation modification of the Ames Salmonella/microsomal assay with tester strains TA97, TA98, TAlOO and TA102. All strains were tested with activation (20 and 50 {micro}l/ plate) and without activation. The lewisite was screened initially for toxicity with TA98 over a range of concentrations from 0.01 to 250 {micro}g of material per plate. However, concentrations selected for mutagenicity testing were adjusted to a range of 0.001 to 5 {micro}g/plate because of the sensitivity of tester strain TA102, which exhibited cytotoxicity at 0.01 ug/plate. No mutagenic response was exhibited by any of the strains in either method used. All other tester strains showed evidence of cytoxicity (reduction in mutagen response or sparse background lawn) at 5.0 {micro}g/plate or lower

Toxicology Studies on Lewisite and Sulfur Mustard Agents: Mutagenicity of Lewisite in the Salmonella Histidine Reversion Assay Final Report

The mutagenic potential of lewisite was evaluated in the standard plate incorporation method and by the preincubation modification of the Ames Salmonella/microsomal assay with tester strains TA97, TA98, TAlOO and TA102. All strains were tested with activation (20 and 50 {micro}l/ plate) and without activation. The lewisite was screened initially for toxicity with TA98 over a range of concentrations from 0.01 to 250 {micro}g of material per plate. However, concentrations selected for mutagenicity testing were adjusted to a range of 0.001 to 5 {micro}g/plate because of the sensitivity of tester strain TA102, which exhibited cytotoxicity at 0.01 ug/plate. No mutagenic response was exhibited by any of the strains in either method used. All other tester strains showed evidence of cytoxicity (reduction in mutagen response or sparse background lawn) at 5.0 {micro}g/plate or lower

Toxicology Studies on Lewisite and Sulfur Mustard Agents: Mutagenicity of Sulfur Mustard in the Salmonella Histidine Reversion Assay Final Report

The mutagenic potential of bis 2-chloroethyl sulfide (HD} a bifunctional sulfur mustard was evaluated in the standard plate incorporation version and the preincubation modification of the Salmonella/microsomal assay with tester strains TA97, TA98, TA100 and TA102, with and without 59 activation. HD-induced point mutations in strain TA102 and frameshift mutations in TA97 but showed little or no mutagenicity against strains TA98 and TA100. Extensive HD-induced cell killing was observed with the excision repair deficient strains (TA100, TA98 and TA97) but not with strain TA102, which is wild-activation by Aroc1or induced rat liver microsomes (S9)

Texas Transportation Researcher

Quarterly magazine of the Texas Transportation Institute discussing the research, professional, and service activities of the organization as well as general research and innovations related to transportation in Texas

Toxicology Studies on Lewisite and Sulfur Mustard Agents: Mutagenicity of Sulfur Mustard in the Salmonella Histidine Reversion Assay Final Report

The mutagenic potential of bis 2-chloroethyl sulfide (HD} a bifunctional sulfur mustard was evaluated in the standard plate incorporation version and the preincubation modification of the Salmonella/microsomal assay with tester strains TA97, TA98, TA100 and TA102, with and without 59 activation. HD-induced point mutations in strain TA102 and frameshift mutations in TA97 but showed little or no mutagenicity against strains TA98 and TA100. Extensive HD-induced cell killing was observed with the excision repair deficient strains (TA100, TA98 and TA97) but not with strain TA102, which is wild-activation by Aroc1or induced rat liver microsomes (S9)