Trade for Development. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

This report emphasizes high-income countries’ responsibility to lead by example in pursuing more open markets and in supporting the Least Developed Countries to raise their export competitiveness. It proposes concrete and practical steps that governments and international agencies can undertake to bring trade to bear on development. The report has been prepared by a group of leading experts who contributed in their personal capacity and volunteered their time to this important task. I am very grateful for their thorough and skilled efforts, and I am sure that the practical options for action in this report will make an important contribution to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. I strongly recommend it to anyone who is interested in how to mobilize trade for development.

After the Fall: The Future of Global Cooperation

Governmen

\u3cem\u3eBataclanismo\u3c/em\u3e! Or, How Deco Bodies Transformed Postrevolutionary Mexico City

In the spring of 1925, Santa Anita\u27s Festival of Flowers seemed to follow its tranquil trend of previous years. The large displays of flowers, the selection of indias bonitas (as the contestants of beauty pageants organized in an attempt to stimulate indigenism were known) and the boat-rides on the Viga Canal, all communicated what residents of neighboring Mexico City had come to expect of the small pueblo in the Federal District since the Porfiriato: the respite of a peaceful pastoral, the link to a colorful past, and the promise that mexicanidad was alive and well in the campo. Unfortunately, wrote Manuel Rámirez Cárdenas of El Globo, the modern newspaper, the next day, this idyllic tradition was rudely interrupted by a group of audacious, scantily clad women. The culprits were actresses of Mexico City\u27s Lírico theater, who walked around Santa Anita\u27s streets in picaresque clothing —stage outfits that left little to the imagination, particularly in broad daylight—and upset visitors and campesinos alike. According to Cárdenas, abuelitas and mamás were shocked by the display, averting their eyes from the female spectacle in fear of el pecado mortal. Thankfully, for the mothers and grandmothers in the audience, the festival continued in predictable fashion after the initial uproar. Organizers continued with the traditional dances, and judges selected an india bonita from a pool of young, decente mestizo girls to represent the pueblo and the festival. Unbeknownst to the residents of rural Santa Anita, the daring actresses of El Lírico were part of a new phenomenon that had swept through Mexico City like wildfire, turned the entertainment world upside down, and pushed many to reconsider what constituted female beauty, decency, and lo mexicano. A few months earlier, on February 12th, a grand variety spectacle named Voilá Paris: La Ba-ta-clán premiered in Teatro Iris and instantly sent shock waves throughout the Mexican entertainment world and the larger metropolis. The show featured seminude and nude French actresses, who performed dances and acts that appeared to be a mix of classical ballet, Ziegfeld Follies chorus lines, and tableaux vivants. Within weeks, Mexican copycat productions capitalized on the enormous success of the show, triggering a new entertainment phenomenon named after the original production: Bataclanismo. It also launched a new kind of female star, the bataclana, who came to represent the erotic, and more dangerous, attributes of the flapper for Mexican audiences, and whose body became the site of contested and divergent notions of modernity. In this article, I explore bataclanismo as a normative discourse that reached far beyond the theater into the practice of everyday life. I do so to gauge the transition of changing ideals of femininity in Mexico from 1925 to 1935, and the influence these changes had on the development of urban space. Drawing on Elizabeth Grosz\u27 and Doreen Massey\u27s insights that place and gender are mutually constitutive, this article examines the articulation between the embodied city and changing gender norms in the wake of both the Mexican revolution and the advent of twentieth-century global capital. Analyzing these relationships from Judith Butler\u27s perspective of gender performance, especially as read through bodies, I argue that a new transnational aesthetic of feminine embodiment celebrated in bataclanismo influenced a distinct urban modernity and sociability in Mexico City. This new ideal female physique that stressed length, height, and androgyny—what I term a Deco body—helped to reconfigure Mexico City in terms of gender, space and race. It ushered in new gender ideals, helped visualize urban modernity, and bridged the gap between two divergent discourses that accompanied revolutionary reform, indigenismo and mestizaje, paving the way for a mestizo modernity

What future for the Global Aid for Trade Initiative? Towards an assessment of its achievements and limitations

As with any form of contemporary global governance, the impact of the global Aid for Trade Initiative (2006) has been mixed. However, to dismiss it as a failure would be premature. The co-ordination system established was based on best-practice techniques of governance in a diverse non-hierarchical environment, such as the international development community. This form of co-operation cannot overcome global economic and political asymmetries, but it can be effective in several respects. In particular, the Initiative led to increased funding for AfT and kick-started a range of initiatives and technical advances; while the monitoring process has evolved significantly to give voice to new actors and issues. Although the future of the AfT Initiative is uncertain, its achievements merit careful consideration

Ant-Pollinator Conflict Results in Pollinator Deterrence but no Nectar Trade-Offs

Direct and indirect negative interactions between ant guards and pollinators on ant-plants are expected for two reasons. First, aggressive ants may deter pollinators directly. Second, pollinators benefit from plant investment in reproduction whilst ants benefit from plant investment in indirect defense, and resource allocation trade-offs between these functions could lead to indirect conflict. We explored the potential for ant-pollinator conflict in a Mexican myrmecophile, Turnera velutina, which rewards ants with extrafloral nectar and pollinators with floral nectar. We characterized the daily timing of ant and pollinator activity on the plant and used experiments to test for direct and indirect conflict between these two groups of mutualists. We tested for direct conflict by quantifying pollinator responses to flowers containing dead specimens of aggressive ant species, relative to unoccupied control flowers. We assessed indirect conflict by testing for the existence of a trade-off in sugar allocation between ant and pollinator rewards, evidenced by an increase in floral nectar secretion when extrafloral nectar secretion was prevented. Secretion of floral and extrafloral nectar, activity of ants and pollinators, and pollen deposition all overlapped in daily time and peaked within the first 2 h after flowers opened. We found evidence of direct conflict, in that presence of ants inside the flowers altered pollinator behavior and reduced visit duration, although visit frequency was unchanged. We found no evidence for indirect conflict, with no significant difference in the volume or sugar content of floral nectar between control plants and those in which extrafloral nectar secretion was prevented. The presence of ants in flowers alters pollinator behavior in ways that are likely to affect pollination dynamics, though there is no apparent trade-off between plant investment in nectar rewards for pollinators and ant guards. Further studies are required to quantify the effect of the natural abundance of ants in flowers on pollinator behavior, and any associated impacts on plant reproductive success

Non-nociceptive roles of opioids in the CNS: opioids' effects on neurogenesis, learning, memory and affect.

Mortality due to opioid use has grown to the point where, for the first time in history, opioid-related deaths exceed those caused by car accidents in many states in the United States. Changes in the prescribing of opioids for pain and the illicit use of fentanyl (and derivatives) have contributed to the current epidemic. Less known is the impact of opioids on hippocampal neurogenesis, the functional manipulation of which may improve the deleterious effects of opioid use. We provide new insights into how the dysregulation of neurogenesis by opioids can modify learning and affect, mood and emotions, processes that have been well accepted to motivate addictive behaviours