Reflections on Young Women and the Youth Crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa

There has been an upsurge in academic studies on youth in Sub-Saharan Africa since the last decade of the 20th century, underlining the growing importance that generational cleavages seem to play in today’s societies. However, gender has been neglected in research and policies bearing on youth, unveiling a rather negative and limited approach to Sub-Saharan African youth: limit situations are those most focused on (as the role of youth in conflicts), young males being perceived as the most active in those contexts and who therefore shall be the focus of political (and academic) attention. Acknowledging the need to integrate gender in the approaches to youth, this paper tries to grasp, through a preliminary literature review, how the predicaments of the so-called “youth crisis” are lived and perceived by young girls, and identify the main themes and theoretical perspectives of the literature that has tried to explore this thematic

The double marginalisation: reflections on young women and the youth crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa

There has been an upsurge in academic studies on youth in Sub-Saharan Africa since the last decade of the 20th century, underlining the growing importance that generational cleavages seem to play in today’s societies. However, gender has been neglected in research and policies bearing on youth, unveiling a rather negative and limited approach to Sub-Saharan African youth: limit situations are those most focused on (as the role of youth in conflicts), young males being perceived as the most active in those contexts and who therefore shall be the focus of political (and academic) attention. Acknowledging the need to integrate gender in the approaches to youth, this paper tries to grasp, through a preliminary literature review, how the predicaments of the so-called “youth crisis” are lived and perceived by young girls, and identify the main themes and theoretical perspectives of the literature that has tried to explore this thematic

Age and growth of the pink dentex Dentex gibbosus (Rafinesque, 1810) caught off the Madeira Archipelago

A total of 146 otoliths were extracted for age readings from 68 females (23.2-90.1 cm TL), 76 males (22.0-81.3 cm TL) and 2 undetermined (30.3-38.0 cm TL), between April 2004 and December 2007. The maximum age obtained from whole otoliths was 11 years. Differences in the growth rhythms were observed between the sexes (females: L∞=134.4, K=0.092 and t0=−0.406; males: L∞=135.9, K=0.078 and t0=−0.894; and all fish were: L∞=149.8, K=0.078 and t0=−0.784). Pink dentex attain 50% of their maximum theoretical length during their fourth year of life. The weight-length relationship (W = q Lfb) were determined separately for each sex and for all fish: for females q=0.01094 and b=3.033, for males q=0.10002 and b=3.047 and for all, q=0.01027 and b=3.046. According to the F-test, there were no significant differences between the weight-length relations obtained for females and males (F-test, F=2.2526, p=0.06646)

Dependent Types for Class-based Mutable Objects

We present an imperative object-oriented language featuring a dependent type system designed to support class-based programming and inheritance. Programmers implement classes in the usual imperative style, and may take advantage of a richer dependent type system to express class invariants and restrictions on how objects are allowed to change and be used as arguments to methods. By way of example, we implement insertion and deletion for binary search trees in an imperative style, and come up with types that ensure the binary search tree invariant. This is the first dependently-typed language with mutable objects that we know of to bring classes and index refinements into play, enabling types (classes) to be refined by indices drawn from some constraint domain. We give a declarative type system that supports objects whose types may change, despite being sound. We also give an algorithmic type system that provides a precise account of quantifier instantiation in a bidirectional style, and from which it is straightforward to read off an implementation. Moreover, all the examples in the paper have been run, compiled and executed in a fully functional prototype that includes a plugin for the Eclipse IDE

Dependent Types for Class-based Mutable Objects (Artifact)

This artifact is based on DOL, a Dependent Object-oriented Language featuring dependent types, mutable objects and class-based inheritance with subtyping. The typechecker written in Xtend, a flexible and expressive dialect of Java, is a direct implementation of the algorithmic type system described in the companion paper. It uses a direct interface to Z3 theorem prover via its API for Java. The artifact ships with an IDE developed as an Eclipse plugin based on the Xtext framework

Thinking of fish population discrimination: population average phenotype vs. population phenotypes

The genetic polymorphism and phenotypic variation are key in ecology and evolution. The morphological variability of the contour of fish otoliths has been extensively used for the delimitation of stocks. These studies are conventionally based on average phenotype using elliptic Fourier analysis and lineal discriminant analysis as classifier. Considering new analytical options, such as the wavelet transformand non-parametric algorithms, we here analyzed the otolith shape of Trachurus picturatus (blue jack mackerel) from mainland Portugal, Madeira, and the Canaries. We explore the phenotypic variation throughout a latitudinal gradient, establish a hypothesis to explain this variability based on the reaction norms, and determine how the use of average phenotype and/or morphotypes influences in the delimitation of stocks. Four morphotypes were identified in all regions, with an increase of phenotypes in warmer waters. The findings demonstrated that stocks were clearly separated with classification rates over 90%. The use of morphotypes, revealed seasonal variations in their frequencies and per region. The presence of shared phenotypes in different proportions among fishing grounds may open new management approaches in migratory species. These results show the importance of the phenotypic diversity in fisheries management.Preprin

Weight–length relationships of four intertidal mollusc species from the northeastern Atlantic Ocean and their potential for conservation

Weight-length relationships (WLRs) are frequently used for the development of comparative studies of life history, population dynamics, ecosystem modelling and estimation of the production and biomass of populations among regions. WLRs provide information about growth, wellbeing and fitness of a population in a marine environment. WLRs for four topshells (Phorcus atratus, Phorcus lineatus, Phorcus mariae, Phorcus sauciatus) caught in North-eastern Atlantic Ocean (Azores, Canaries, Cape Verde, Madeira and Mainland Portugal) were established and their relative growth was assessed. The results showed that almost all species exhibited a positive allometric growth. A comparative study on the effect of harvest in the relative growth of P. sauciatus in the archipelago of Madeira showed that all the populations from exploited areas exhibited a negative allometric growth in contrast to the populations from the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) which were predominantly isometric. The present results indicate that the conservation measures established in the protected areas promoted a positive effect in the protected populations and are valuable for establishing a set of monitoring and management measures aiming at the sustainable exploitation and conservation of these species. These results are important to demonstrate the role of MPAs in the conservation of these keystone species in the north eastern Atlantic Ocean rocky shore ecosystems.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio