Monitoring Climate Finance in Developing Countries: Challenges and Next Steps

At the 18th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parties agreed to a standard format for developed countries to follow when reporting on the climate finance they provide to developing countries. Developed countries will use these formats for the first time when they submit their Biennial Reports to the UNFCCC in early 2014. Later in 2014, developing countries are expected to submit Biennial Update Reports showing the financial support that they have received. From initial attempts to measure and report climate finance by developed and developing countries, it is already apparent that information on finance provided is unlikely to match information on finance received.Aside from the reporting requirements of the UNFCCC, better financial data can help decision makers in developing countries identify gaps, improve coordination and management, and raise funds to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Better climate finance information can also enable countries to draw lessons from the use of different financial instruments and develop strategies and policies that aim to expand finance for climate change. Improved data will allow the information reported by developed countries to be cross-checked, thus promoting transparency, completeness, and accuracy. Finally, it can contribute to a more comprehensive picture of climate financial flows in relation to development assistance at the national and international levels. This working paper reports on three workshops in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, in which participants discussed some of the steps that developing countries and their international partners can take toward monitoring and tracking climate finance more effectively. More than 40 representatives from 20 developing countries, regional development banks, and national organizations attended the three workshops. Participants shared information on the limits of existing legislation and mandates, national planning and approval processes, financial management systems, efforts to coordinate among ministries and development partners, and many other unique challenges faced by the participating countries. WRI obtained additional information via a questionnaire, follow-up correspondence, and interviews with representatives of the countries

Reducing inequalities in school exclusion: learning from good practice

The research reported here was commissioned by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner’s to inform the second year of their on-going School Exclusions Inquiry. The first year of the inquiry culminated in the publication of the report They Never Give Up On You which included an analysis of recent national data on recorded exclusions from school that provided stark evidence of inequality for particular groups. Concerns about the disproportionate impact of school exclusion on specific groups of young people are not new and there have previously been attempts at policy level to reduce inequalities. However, the relationship between exclusion and other educational and social processes is complex and these inequalities persist. The over-arching objective of the research was therefore to identify characteristics of good practice in addressing inequalities in school exclusions, with particular attention to the following factors: Free School Meals; gender; ethnicity; and Special Educational Needs (SEN)

Spatial-sequential working memory in younger and older adults : age predicts backward recall performance within both age groups

Working memory is vulnerable to age-related decline, but there is debate regarding the age-sensitivity of different forms of spatial-sequential working memory task, depending on their passive or active nature. The functional architecture of spatial working memory was therefore explored in younger (18-40 years) and older (64-85 years) adults, using passive and active recall tasks. Spatial working memory was assessed using a modified version of the Spatial Span subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale – Third Edition (WMS-III; Wechsler, 1998). Across both age groups, the effects of interference (control, visual, or spatial), and recall type (forward and backward), were investigated. There was a clear effect of age group, with younger adults demonstrating a larger spatial working memory capacity than the older adults overall. There was also a specific effect of interference, with the spatial interference task (spatial tapping) reliably reducing performance relative to both the control and visual interference (dynamic visual noise) conditions in both age groups and both recall types. This suggests that younger and older adults have similar dependence upon active spatial rehearsal, and that both forward and backward recall require this processing capacity. Linear regression analyses were then carried out within each age group, to assess the predictors of performance in each recall format (forward and backward). Specifically the backward recall task was significantly predicted by age, within both the younger and older adult groups. This finding supports previous literature showing lifespan linear declines in spatial-sequential working memory, and in working memory tasks from other domains, but contrasts with previous evidence that backward spatial span is no more sensitive to aging than forward span. The study suggests that backward spatial span is indeed more processing-intensive than forward span, even when both tasks include a retention period, and that age predicts backward spatial span performance across the adult lifespan, within both younger and older adulthoo

Male Nursing Students\u27 Experiences During Family Health Concepts: A Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe male students’ perceptions of navigating learning experiences during family health concepts. The theory guiding this study is Vygotsky’s (1978) socio-cultural learning theory. The following results from the data collection included 10 one-on-one interviews, 10 written reflection exercises, and one focus group. Following van Manen’s (1990), an interpretive holistic circular approach to data analysis was applied to understand the essence of male students learning and navigating the social environment of family health concepts in nursing clinical rotations. The theme development included moving back and forth between pre-understanding, existing literature, and contextual data to construct new understandings of the essence of the phenomenon, following the Hermeneutic Circle of data analysis. The results included three themes developed through the data analysis including (1) obstacles male students face, (2) social interactions\u27 impact on learning, and (3) impact on decisions for future practice

Attachment Anxiety and Avoidance: Relationship to Body Image and Exercise Behavior

This study was designed to investigate the role of attachment anxiety and avoidance in predicting persons\u27 body image, body appreciation, and obligatory exercise behavior. Two hundred and twenty eight participants (100 men and 128 women) completed the Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ; Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994), Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire (MBSRQ; Cash, 2000), Body Appreciation Scale (BAS; Avalos et al., 2005), and Obligatory Exercise Questionnaire (OEQ; Pasman & Thompson, 1988). Results provided at least partial support for many of the hypotheses. The current study replicated results from previous research pertaining to the relationship between attachment and body image. However, the results suggest that attachment relates to body image differently in men than in women. For men, only attachment anxiety was related to body image, whereas for women body image was associated with both attachment anxiety and avoidance. Obligatory exercise was not strongly related to attachment in either men or women. Health evaluation was a very important factor in body image for men and women in relation to both attachment anxiety and avoidance

Oxidant stress and platelet responsiveness : implications of body mass index and the modulating effects of diet, acute exercise and selenium supplementation

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Art in the Netherlands East Indies

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1945. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Calcium and Leucine Modulation of Airway Inflammation

Over the past several decades the prevalence of obesity and asthma have increased in a parallel fashion. Recent studies reported a positive relationship between the two disorders that may in fact be causal. Although the link between obesity and asthma has become widely recognized, the underlying pathophysiological connection is not elucidated. Increased markers of inflammatory and oxidative stress are present in obesity and asthma suggesting the link is immunological. The systemic inflammation observed in obesity may potentially initiate adverse affects in the airways. Previous studies have shown that consumption of dairy foods (rich in calcium and leucine) suppress 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol (calcitriol) resulting in decreased inflammatory stress associated with excess adiposity. Additionally, adipocyte leucine treatment was reported to decrease pro-inflammatory TNFα and increase anti-inflammatory adiponectin cytokines, which have been implicated in asthmatic disease. Consequently, we sought to determine if correcting the imbalance of adipocyte inflammatory cytokine secretion via calcium and leucine treatment would have a functional effect on airway inflammation. We demonstrated that conditioned medium collected adipocytes (ACM) treated with leucine for 48hrs significantly reduced monocyte-airway smooth muscle adhesion, lung endothelial cell ICAM-1 adhesion molecule expression, and polymorphonuclear (PMN) cell CD11b expression in vitro compared to control, while calcitriol exerted the opposite effects. Furthermore, these findings were extended to an established murine model of asthma. Female BALB/c mice were sensitized and challenged with chicken egg albumin (OVA) to induce airway inflammation. Animals were fed a high fat diet with no supplementation, high calcium (1.2%), leucine (200% normal levels), or a diet with a combination of calcium (1.2%) and leucine (200% normal levels). We found that the combined high calcium and leucine supplemented high fat diet animals had significantly less eosinophils in collected bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) compared to control diet mice. These data suggest that calcium and leucine may have potential therapeutic affects on obesity associated airway inflammation