An inventory of a coastal forest in Kenya at Gedi National Monument including a check-list and a Nature trail : report from a minor field study

The aim of this project was to evaluate the conservation status of Gedi as a Kenyan coastal forest, to transfer valuable knowledge about indigenous plants from old traditional healers to the coming generations and to contribute to the botanical research in Kenya. The project was carried out on the Kenyan coast, where a forest of 35 ha among the Gedi National Monument was investigated. A check-list of the vascular plants was accomplished and a nature trail with an accompanying booklet was prepared. An attempt to describe and classify the forest is included in the report. Gedi National Monument is situated 15 km SW of Malindi. It used to be an Afro-Arabic town but was deserted in the beginning of the 17th century. A forest developed, and part of it has probably been left intact since then. Today the area is protected as a national park. The forest is here classified as a Combretum schumarinii - Gyrocarpus americanus lowland semi-deciduous forest on coral rag. It bears little resemblance to the nearest forest, Arabuko-Sokoke (W of Gedi). Gedi forest was probably part of a continuous coral soil vegetation all along the coast. The forest-patches most similar to Gedi are found south of Mombasa, the Jadini and Shimoni forests. These are small and unprotected. The central part of the forest is older and consists mainly of large trees, with a tree-canopy of about 25 m. The outer younger part was probably cut before the forest was protected in 1948. This part is 10-15 m high and shrubby with more lianas. Because of different species composition the paths, the open grassy areas and the main ruin area are separately described. 211 species, including two probably undescribed species, were found within the forest. The nature trail presents 37 species. The illustrated booklet includes their local names and uses. Those were obtained from a local traditional healer. In the appendices are included: 1. A check-list of Gedi forest; 2. A preliminary check-list of Arabuko-Sokoke forest; 3. Preliminary check-lists of Jadini and Shimoni forests; 4. The illustrated Nature Trail booklet; 5. A list of useful plants not mentioned in the Nature Trail booklet; 6. A list of local plant names. This project was initiated by the National Museums of Kenya and financed by the Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA)

Care crises and care fixes under Covid-19: the example of transnational live-in care work

The COVID-19 pandemic brought care work to the forefront of attention. In many countries in the Global North, people became painfully aware that they had ‘outsourced’ a considerable share of this work to temporary migrants. Travel restrictions and lockdown measures disrupted transnational care arrangements and threatened the continuous provision of care. This article uses the example of transnationally organised live-in care in Switzerland to explore measures implemented to maintain care provision during the pandemic. Particularly, it investigates the impacts of these measures on the working conditions and lives of live-in care workers. We build on Emma Dowling’s conceptualisation of ‘care fixes’ and Brigitte Aulenbacher’s notions of ‘abstraction’ and ‘appropriation’ to identify three short-term solutions and argue that they did not solve, but rather only displaced the underlying care crisis. Our insights are based on the analysis of policy documents, 32 in-depth interviews and informal conversations with workers, clients, care agencies and other experts carried out in Switzerland between April 2020 and April 2021. We emphasise the inequalities implicated in transnational care arrangements and their inherent fragility, both of which were exacerbated by the pandemic. We tentatively point to avenues for contestation and for a revaluation of care, which opened up as result of the pandemic-induced disruption of care

Promoting Digital Skills for Austrian Employees through a MOOC: Results and Lessons Learned from Design and Implementation

Digital skills are now essential, not only in information and communications technology (ICT) jobs, but for employees across all sectors. The aim of this article is to detail how employees’ digital skills can be fostered through a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), how such an offer is used and what the effects of such a measure are. Using an approach oriented at action research and design-based research activities, the authors describe the basics of their finding on existing European competence frameworks for digital skills and European projects that used MOOCs, the development and design of the MOOC, the evaluation on the basis of learning analytics insights and a questionnaire, as well as a reflection. The MOOC was offered as Open Educational Resources (OER) on the Austrian MOOC platform iMOOX.at from March to April 2021, with 2083 participants, of whom 381 fully completed the course (at end of June 2021) and 489 filled out the final questionnaire

Social Policy in the EU — Reform Barometer 2016. Bertelsmann Stiftung Social Inclusion Monitor Europe

The Social Inclusion Monitor Europe (SIM Europe) project invited social policy experts from across Europe to participate in the Reform Barometer 2016 survey and assess the reform need, activity and quality with respect to 55 policy objectives in the 28 member states of the European Union between July 2014 and January 2016. This report presents the analysis of the replies from over 1,000 survey participants in five dimensions: Poverty Prevention, Equitable Education, Labour Market Access, Social Cohesion and Non-discrimination, and Health.1 For each member state, the experts’ quantitative assessments have been aggregated to different levels of analysis, yielding a reform need score, an activity rate and a quality score at the levels of policy objectives and of dimensions as well as at the overall level. In addition, the reform performance score is a composite measure that captures each member state’s reform activity and quality using a single number. In what follows, we present a summary of the key findings

Impact of COVID-19 policy responses on live-in care workers in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland

Context: The measures taken to counter the COVID-19 pandemic restricted the circular migration of live-in care workers between their countries of origin and the elderly persons’ households. Objective: In this comparative policy analysis, the impact of COVID-19 related policy measures for transnationally organised live-in care in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland is investigated. Method: Policy measures and media debates were analysed and inquiries with care workers, representatives of care agencies, unions, and activist groups were carried out between March and June 2020. Findings: In accordance with their institutionalisation of live-in care, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland responded differently to the challenges the pandemic posed to live-in care arrangements. However, all three countries focused on extending care workers’ rotas and re-establishing transnational mobility. These priorities subordinated the interests of care workers to those of care recipients. Furthermore, the measures remained short-term solutions that failed to acknowledge the fundamental flaws and inequalities of a care model that relies primarily on female migrant workers and wage differentials within Europe. Limitations: This policy comparison is based on an in-depth analysis of COVID-19 related policies, supplemented by inquiries among stakeholders with whom research had been done prior to the pandemic. More in-depth interviews are required to further substantiate the findings concerning their perspectives and gain insight into the longer-term effects of the pandemic. Implications: The pandemic has brought the flaws of the live-in care model to the fore. Countries need to rethink their fragile care policies, which build on social inequality and uninhibited transnational mobility

Unsichtbare Care-Arbeit. Transnationale Sorgenketten für Schweizer Senior*innen

Mit der Osterweiterung der EU und der damit einhergehenden Personenfreizügigkeit ist in der Schweiz ein neuer Markt entstanden: Spezialisierte Agenturen vermitteln und verleihen osteuropäische Arbeitskräfte an Privathaushalte, wo diese rund um die Uhr betagte Menschen betreuen. Care-Arbeit wird so an meist weibliche Arbeitskräfte aus Ländern mit tieferem Einkommensniveau ausgelagert. Aus einer feministisch-geographischen Perspektive erforschen wir die Funktionsweise und Implikationen dieser global care chains und wollen dazu beitragen, dieses feminisierte und grösstenteils unsichtbare Segment des Arbeitsmarktes zum Gegenstand öffentlicher Debatten zu machen

The occurrence of Guillain-Barré syndrome within families (multiple letters)

We thank Drs. Korn-Lubetzki and Steiner for their interest in our article. They concluded that the 17p12 deletion responsible for HNPP was also present in a family in which three members had an IDP. Two members fulfilled the criteria for CIDP and the other for AIDP.This finding may indicate that CIDP and this deletion may also be present in our recently reported Dutch families in which two or more members had GBS. [...

The occurrence of Guillain-Barré syndrome within families (multiple letters)

We thank Drs. Korn-Lubetzki and Steiner for their interest in our article. They concluded that the 17p12 deletion responsible for HNPP was also present in a family in which three members had an IDP. Two members fulfilled the criteria for CIDP and the other for AIDP.This finding may indicate that CIDP and this deletion may also be present in our recently reported Dutch families in which two or more members had GBS. [...

Carpal, tarsal, and stifle skin lesion prevalence and potential risk factors in Swiss dairy cows kept in tie stalls: A cross-sectional study.

The prevalence of skin lesions at the legs of dairy cows often serves as an indicator for animal welfare and is used as a measurement of adequacy of the present housing conditions. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of skin lesions at the carpus, tarsus, and stifle in Swiss dairy cows kept in tie stalls and to describe potential risk factors associated with the different types and severities thereof. Skin lesions and potential risk factors were assessed in 627 cows of 27 tie stall farms in a cross-sectional study. The associations of each outcome and the potential risk factors were assessed by means of logistic regression models using farm as the random factor. One odds ratio was obtained for each biologically relevant risk factor category and the final models were compared between the lesion types and locations. Tarsal lesions were recorded most frequently, with a prevalence of 62.2, 34.4, and 24.0% for moderate to severe hair loss, any severity of ulceration, and moderate to severe swelling, respectively. The prevalence of carpal lesions ranged from 54.4% for hair loss, over 7.7% for ulceration, to 6.1% for swelling, while stifle lesions were recorded less frequently with a prevalence of 18.6, 8.9, 3.4% for hair loss, ulceration, and swelling, respectively. The risk for various skin lesion types and locations significantly increased, when the concrete stall base was covered with a rubber mat and the bedding depth was low. Cows were at the lowest risk to develop skin lesions when they had more than 13 days of outdoor exercise per month. The prevalence of skin lesions in tied Swiss dairy cows is remarkably high and could possibly be reduced by providing the herd more frequent outdoor exercise and a well-cushioned, friction-absorbing and non-abrasive lying surface

Twenty-four or Four-and-twenty : Language Modulates Cross-Modal Matching for Multi-Digit Numbers in Children and Adults

Does number–word structure have a long-lasting impact on transcoding? Contrary to English, German number words comprise decade–unit inversion (e.g., vierundzwanzig is literally translated as four-and-twenty). To investigate the mental representation of numbers, we tested the effect of visual and linguistic–morphological characteristics on the development of verbal–visual transcoding. In a longitudinal cross-linguistic design, response times (RTs) in a number-matching experiment were analyzed in Grade 2 (119 German-speaking and 179 English-speaking children) and in Grade 3 (131 German-speaking and 160 English-speaking children). To test for long-term effects, the same experiment was given to 38 German-speaking and 42 English-speaking adults. Participants needed to decide whether a spoken number matched a subsequent visual Arabic number. Systematic variation of digits in the nonmatching distractors allowed comparison of three different transcoding accounts (lexicalization, visual, and linguistic–morphological). German speakers were generally slower in rejecting inverted number distractors than English speakers. Across age groups, German speakers were more distracted by Arabic numbers that included the correct unit digit, whereas English speakers showed stronger distraction when the correct decade digit was included. These RT patterns reflect differences in number–word morphology. The individual cost of rejecting an inverted distractor (inversion effect) predicted arithmetic skills in German-speaking second-graders only. The moderate relationship between the efficiency to identify a matching number and arithmetic performance could be observed cross-linguistically in all age groups but was not significant in German-speaking adults. Thus, findings provide consistent evidence of a persistent impact of number–word structure on number processing, whereas the relationship with arithmetic performance was particularly pronounced in young children