Sources of Unreliable Testimony from Children

We distilled research findings on sources of unreliable testimony from children into four principles that capture how the field of forensic developmental psychology conceptualizes this topic. The studies selected to illustrate these principles address three major questions: (a) how do young children perform in eyewitness studies, (b) why are some children less accurate than others, and (c) what phenomena generate unreliable testimony? Throughout our research, our focus is on factors other than lying that produce inaccurate or seemingly inconsistent autobiographical reports.Collectively, this research has shown that (a) children’s eyewitness accuracy is highly dependent on context, (b) neurological immaturity makes children vulnerable to errors under some circumstances, and (c) some children are more swayed by external influences than others. Finally, the diversity of factors that can influence the reliability of children’s testimony dictates that (d) analyzing children’s testimony as if they were adults (i.e., with adult abilities, sensibilities, and motivations) will lead to frequent misunderstandings. It takes considerable knowledge of development—including information about developmental psycholinguistics, memory development, and the gradual emergence of cognitive control—to work with child witnesses and to analyze cases as there are many sources of unreliable testimony

Stuck in a rut: emerging cocoa cooperatives in Peru and the factors that influence their performance

Agri-cooperatives play an important role in helping resource-poor farmers reach high-value markets. In addition to linking smallholders to markets, cooperatives provide their members with various services, such as extension, credit, input subsidies, and social programmes. While the literature contains many examples of success, there has been limited discussion on the often long and turbulent process by which cooperatives develop over time and the viable options for shortcuts. This study examines four emerging cocoa cooperatives in Peru to determine their overall business viability, the key factors that advanced their development, and their capacity to address the needs of their members. Our findings suggest that strategies for supporting cooperative development have largely failed to address major internal weaknesses and the challenges posed in the external environment. The cooperatives have received time-bound, uncoordinated, and often small-scale, interventions, which have focused on infrastructure expansion and technical assistance. Important areas related to business management and governance structures, trust relationships with buyers, and sufficient working capital have largely been ignored. Shortcuts may be achieved through improvements in access to business development and financial services, deeper engagement by private sector to support the development process, and commitment by stakeholders to monitoring and critical reflection for strategy refinement

Viewpoint: Agri-nutrition research: Revisiting the contribution of maize and wheat to human nutrition and health

Research linking agriculture and nutrition has evolved since the mid-20th century. The current focus is on child-stunting, dietary diversity and ‘nutrient-rich’ foods in recognition of the growing burdens of malnutrition and non-communicable diseases. This article concerns the global dietary and health contribution of major cereals, specifically maize and wheat, which are often considered not to be ‘nutrient-rich’ foods. Nevertheless, these cereals are major sources of dietary energy, of essential proteins and micronutrients, and diverse non-nutrient bioactive food components. Research on bioactives, and dietary fibre in particular, is somewhat ‘siloed’, with little attention paid by the agri-nutrition research community to the role of cereal bioactives in healthy diets, and the adverse health effects often arising through processing and manufacturing of cereals-based food products. We argue that the research agenda should embrace the whole nutritional contribution of the multiple dietary components of cereals towards addressing the triple burden of undernutrition, micronutrient malnutrition, overweight/obesity and non-communicable diseases. Agri-nutrition and development communities need to adopt a multidisciplinary and food systems research approach from farm to metabolism. Agriculture researchers should collaborate with other food systems stakeholders on nutrition-related challenges in cereal production, processing and manufacturing, and food waste and losses. Cereal and food scientists should also collaborate with social scientists to better understand the impacts on diets of the political economy of the food industry, and the diverse factors which influence local and global dietary transitions, consumer behavioural choices, dietary change, and the assessment and acceptance of novel and nutritious cereal-based products

Tetraethylene Gycol-Based Electrolytes for High Temperature Electrodeposition of Compound Semiconductors

We report an investigation of tetraethylene glycol (TEG) solutions of chloride salts (CdCl2 ,TeCl4 ,and HgCl2 ) for electrodeposition of films of CdTe and Hg1.xCdxTe, leading II-VI semiconductors. The high boiling point (314°C), below-room temperature (T) (-6°C) melting point, adequate metal chloride solubilities, and low toxicity of TEG make it a good candidate for electrodeposition at T \u3e 200°C. Such temperatures tend to activate growth of larger crystallites than with aqueous electrolytes at T\u3c 100 °C, as are advantageous in optoelectronic applications. Initial results do, indeed, indicate a dramatic increase in crystallinity with deposition temperature, especially for the CdTe films which are nearly amorphous when grown at room temperature. Hg1.xCdxTe films (x\u3c 0.5) are marginally polycrystalline when grown at room temperature but also improve in crystallinity at higher growth temperatures. There appears to be a strong decrease in film adherence and uniformity as growth temperature increases for both materials probably because the greatly increased carrier concentrations at higher temperatures increase film conductivity which, in turn, supports easy electroplating of protruding loose dendritic and/or columnar crystallites, instead of the monolayer-by monolayer growth of lower conductivity material as occurs at lower temperatures, especially in the higher bandgap/lower conductivity CdTe. The same increase in film conductivity with temperature is responsible for the decrease in the relative photosensitivity of both the CdTe and Hg1.x CdxTe with temperature. At all temperatures, the inferior adherence, uniformity, and photosensitivity as well as the superior crystallinity of Hg1.xCd xTe over that of the CdTe are also explained by its lower bandgap and higher conductivity. On balance, however, the initial results prove the utility of high temperature TEG electrolytes for electrodepositing CdTe and Hg1.xCdxTe films with much better crystallinity than for those grown at lower temperatures, notably in aqueous baths

Ambition meets reality: Lessons from the taro boom in Nicaragua

Between 2006 and 2011, Nicaragua shipped an average of US$ 9.4 million per year of smallholder-produced fresh taro (Colocasia esculenta) to the United States; however, by 2016, the US market for Nicaraguan taro had effectively collapsed. We analyse the short-lived taro boom from the perspective of complex adaptive systems, showing how shocks, interactions between value chain actors, and lack of adaptive capacity among chain actors together contributed to the collapse of the chain. Primary data was collected from businesses and smallholders in 2010 and 2016 to understand the actors involved, their business relations, and the benefits and set backs they experienced along the way. The results show the capacity of better-off smallholders to engage in a demanding market, but also the struggles faced by more vulnerable smallholders to build new production systems and respond to internal and external shocks. Local businesses were generally unprepared for the uncertainties inherent in fresh horticultural trade or for engagement with distant buyers. Existing guides and tools for designing value chain interventions will benefit from greater attention to the circumstances of local actors and the challenges of building productive inter-business relations under higher levels of risk and uncertainty. Results demonstrate the need for a greater awareness of adaptive capacity within marketing systems that involve smallholders, a more critical look at the underlying assumptions of interventions for building these value chains, and the need for alternative planning scenarios, better risk mitigation and adaptation strategies. This case serves as a wake-up call for practitioners, donors, researchers and the private sector on how to identify market opportunities and the design of more robust strategies to respond to them

The use of ground rules in investigative interviews with children : a synthesis and call for research

Guidelines for conducting investigative interviews with children often include instructions that explain the conversational rules of the interview. Despite the widespread and international use of such instructions (also referred to as "ground rules"), the body of research characterizing children\u27s understanding of these rules and documenting the impact of instruction on memory reports is relatively small. We review the use of ground rules in investigative interviews, the developmental differences that likely underlie children\u27s ability to make sense of these rules, and research pertaining to the effects of the ground rules commonly included in interview guidelines on the reports of 3- to 13-year-old children. We then present a study space analysis concerning the five ground rules reviewed: (a) a statement about interviewer naïveté regarding the target events, (b) instructions to tell the interviewer when a mistake has been made, (c) cautions that some questions may be repeated, and instructions to say (d) "I don\u27t understand" and (e) "I don\u27t know." The results demonstrate obvious gaps in this body of literature, with only the "I don\u27t know" ground rule having received significant attention. In addition to exploring how individual rules impact interview performance, we encourage more process-oriented studies that relate developmental differences in ground rules benefits to the cognitive processes that underlie rule understanding and implementation. Optimally, this research should identify the most suitable format and placement of instruction in interviews and broaden to more often include field studies of child witnesses

Children\u27s performance on ground rules questions: implications for forensic interviewing

Ground rules, also called interview instructions, are included in investigative interviews with children around the world. These rules aim to manage the expectations of children who are typically unaccustomed to being questioned by adults who are naïve to the children\u27s experiences. Although analog research has examined the efficacy of ground rules instruction, a systematic analysis of children\u27s ability to respond appropriately to each of the rules has not been reported. In the current study, we scored the accuracy of children\u27s (N = 501, 4 to 12 years) responses to 5 ground rules practice questions (e.g., "What is my dog\u27s name?") and 2 questions that asked whether they would follow the rules, and then assigned inaccurate responses to 1 of several error categories. Few children answered every question correctly, but their performance on individual questions was encouraging. As expected, there were marked differences in children\u27s understanding across ground rules questions (especially among the younger children), with "Don\u27t guess" and "Tell the truth" rules being the easiest to comprehend. Together with evidence that ground rules instruction takes little time to deliver (typically 2 to 4 min) and is associated with improved accuracy in previous research, these findings support the use of ground rules in investigative interviews of children 4 years and older

Above and belowground community strategies respond to different global change drivers

Environmental changes alter the diversity and structure of communities. By shifting the range of species traits that will be successful under new conditions, environmental drivers can also dramatically impact ecosystem functioning and resilience. Above and belowground communities jointly regulate whole-ecosystem processes and responses to change, yet they are frequently studied separately. To determine whether these communities respond similarly to environmental changes, we measured taxonomic and trait-based responses of plant and soil microbial communities to four years of experimental warming and nitrogen deposition in a temperate grassland. Plant diversity responded strongly to N addition, whereas soil microbial communities responded primarily to warming, likely via an associated decrease in soil moisture. These above and belowground changes were associated with selection for more resource-conservative plant and microbe growth strategies, which reduced community functional diversity. Functional characteristics of plant and soil microbial communities were weakly correlated (P = 0.07) under control conditions, but not when above or belowground communities were altered by either global change driver. These results highlight the potential for global change drivers operating simultaneously to have asynchronous impacts on above and belowground components of ecosystems. Assessment of a single ecosystem component may therefore greatly underestimate the whole-system impact of global environmental changes

Changing asset endowments and smallholder participation in higher-value markets: evidence from certified-coffee producers in Nicaragua

Health-related incentives to reward effort or commitment are commonplace in many professional contracts throughout the world. Typically absent from small-scale agriculture in poor countries, such incentives may help overcome both health issues for remote rural families and supply issues for firms. Using a randomized control design, we investigate the impact of adding a micronutrient-fortified product in contracts between a Senegalese dairy processing factory and its seminomadic milk suppliers. Findings show significant increases in frequency of delivery but only limited impacts on total milk delivered. These impacts are time sensitive and limited mostly to households where women are more in control of milk contracts.Non-PRIFPRI1; CRP2; CRP4; C Improving markets and trade; B Promoting healthy food systems; G Cross-cutting gender theme; Capacity StrengtheningMTID; PHND; PIM; A4NHCGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM); CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH

Building cooperative capacity: the specialty coffee sector in Nicaragua

Purpose – Within the context of widespread donor support for producer organizations, the purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of interventions aimed at rescuing a failed cooperative and improving performance and business linkages between grower-suppliers and international markets through enterprise development. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reports a case study of a Nicaraguan coffee cooperative, Soppexcca, which received substantial donor support at the time of the international coffee crisis between 1999 and 2004. The study used a framework of organizational structure, strategy, empowerment, and performance to assess business performance and sustainability. Quantitative and qualitative data collection focussed on asset building and changes during the period 2005-2009. Findings – Soppexcca achieved major advances in asset building. External interventions played a pivotal role in building organizational capacity to respond to buyers’ demands and market-related shocks. Support was received not only from donors but also from supply chain partners and thirdsector organizations. However, important gaps remain, and addressing these gaps requires changes in Soppexcca and sustained support. Research limitations/implications – As a case study, findings cannot be readily generalized but the implications will be of significance beyond the coffee sector in Nicaragua, wherever and in whatever sector building cooperative capacity is an important development objective. Social implications – Experience with Soppexcca shows that the creation of sustainable collective organizations is a long-term process, particularly in respect of building human capital. Originality/value – The paper examines enterprise development using concepts of capital asset formation and cooperative performance, and argues the significance of effective links between value chain stakeholders as well as internal cooperative performance