Children’s perspectives on their working lives and on public action against child labour in Burkina Faso

The majority of children in Burkina Faso undertake work and, compared to other West African countries, it has the highest rate of children involved in hazardous work (Diallo 2008; NISD 2008), which is one working child out of two. Based on a qualitative survey, this chapter presents the perspectives of Burkinabe children working in two of the hazardous sectors: a quarry and an artisanal mine. The findings show that children acknowledge very difficult working conditions in these sites. However a variety of reasons maintain them in work, which they perceive as a solution and thus challenging action against child labour in Burkina Faso.

The interaction between the physical environments and people

Buildings affect people in various ways. They can help us to work more effectively; they also present a wide range of stimuli for our senses to react to. Intelligent buildings are designed to be aesthetic in sensory terms not just visually appealing but ones in which occupants experience delight, freshness, airiness, daylight, views out and social ambience. All these factors contribute to a general aesthetic which gives pleasure and affects one’s mood. If there is to be a common vision, it is essential for architects, engineers and clients to work closely together throughout the planning, design, construction and operational stages which represent the conception, birth and life of the building. There has to be an understanding of how patterns of work are best suited to a particular building form served by appropriate environmental systems. A host of technologies are emerging that help these processes, but in the end it is how we think about achieving responsive buildings that matters. Intelligent buildings should cope with social and technological changes and also be adaptable to short-term and long-term human needs. We live through our senses. They rely on stimulation from the tasks we are focused on; people around us but also the physical environment. We breathe air and its quality affects the olfactory system; temperature is felt by thermoreceptors in the skin; sound enters our ears; the visual scene is beheld by our eyes. All these stimuli are transmitted along the sensory nervous system to the brain for processing from which physiological and psychological reactions and judgments are formed depending on perception, expectancies and past experiences. It is clear that the environmental setting plays a role in this sensory process. This is the essence of sensory design. Space plays its part as well. The flow of communication is partly electronic but also largely by people meeting face to face. Our sense of space wants different things at different times. Sometimes privacy but other times social needs have to be satisfied besides the organizational requirement to have effective human communications throughout the building. In general if the senses are satisfied people feel better and work better.

Simulation of tree-ring widths with a model for primary production, carbon allocation, and growth

We present a simple, generic model of annual tree growth, called "T". This model accepts input from a first-principles light-use efficiency model (the "P" model). The P model provides values for gross primary production (GPP) per unit of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (PAR). Absorbed PAR is estimated from the current leaf area. GPP is allocated to foliage, transport tissue, and fine-root production and respiration in such a way as to satisfy well-understood dimensional and functional relationships. Our approach thereby integrates two modelling approaches separately developed in the global carbon-cycle and forest-science literature. The T model can represent both ontogenetic effects (the impact of ageing) and the effects of environmental variations and trends (climate and CO2) on growth. Driven by local climate records, the model was applied to simulate ring widths during the period 1958–2006 for multiple trees of Pinus koraiensis from the Changbai Mountains in northeastern China. Each tree was initialised at its actual diameter at the time when local climate records started. The model produces realistic simulations of the interannual variability in ring width for different age cohorts (young, mature, and old). Both the simulations and observations show a significant positive response of tree-ring width to growing-season total photosynthetically active radiation (PAR0) and the ratio of actual to potential evapotranspiration (α), and a significant negative response to mean annual temperature (MAT). The slopes of the simulated and observed relationships with PAR0 and α are similar; the negative response to MAT is underestimated by the model. Comparison of simulations with fixed and changing atmospheric CO2 concentration shows that CO2 fertilisation over the past 50 years is too small to be distinguished in the ring-width data, given ontogenetic trends and interannual variability in climate.

Consumers perception and evaluation of fresh cut buying attributes: a survey on the Italian market

During the last twenty years, consumer choice in high income countries is no longer merely dictated by price and the organoleptic characteristics of a product, but also by other features some of which are not patently tangible. The growing importance of such attributes in the process of consumer choice is not only due to income increase, but also to changes in lifestyle such as migrations from the countryside, a generalized urbanization and consequential city life style, female emancipation and work outside the domestic walls for women, the drastic decrease in hard physical labor and the process of internationalization. The present survey study aims to explore the importance that Italian consumers give to fresh cut buying attributes and which of these attributes should be taken into consideration by industries in order to satisfy the needs of the most critical shoppers. Where possible, market and survey data for fresh cut products will be compared with those for cooked products and before presenting the results and conclusions of the study, the technical issues of processing will be highlighted owing to the fact that they affect the marketing of these products, the recent market situation with regard to consumption will be illustrated and the methodology used will be described.

Digital technology and creative arts career patterns in the UK creative economy

The creative industries have attracted the attention of academics and policy makers for the complexity surrounding their development, supply-chains and models of production. In particular, many have recognised the difficulty in capturing the role that digital technologies play within the creative industries. Digital technologies are embedded in the production and market structures of the creative industries and are also partially distinct and discernible from it. This paper unfolds the role played by digital technologies focusing on a key aspect of its development: human capital. Using student micro-data collected by the Higher Education Statistical Agency (HESA) in the United Kingdom, we investigate the characteristics and location determinants of digital graduates. The paper deals specifically with understanding whether digital skills in the UK are equally embedded across the creative industries, or are concentrated in other sub-sectors. Furthermore, it explores the role that these graduates play in each sub-sector and their financial rewards. Findings suggest that digital technology graduates tend to concentrate in the software and gaming sub-sector of the creative industries but also are likely to be in embedded creative jobs outside of the creative industries. Although they are more likely to be in full-time employment than part-time or self-employment, they also suffer from a higher level of unemployment.

Enhanced effects of combined cognitive bias modification and computerised cognitive behaviour therapy on social anxiety

This study examines whether combined cognitive bias modification for interpretative biases (CBM-I) and computerised cognitive behaviour therapy (C-CBT) can produce enhanced positive effects on interpretation biases and social anxiety. Forty socially anxious students were randomly assigned into two conditions, an intervention group (positive CBM-I + C-CBT) or an active control (neutral CBM-I + C-CBT). At pre-test, participants completed measures of social anxiety, interpretative bias, cognitive distortions, and social and work adjustment. They were exposed to 6 × 30 min sessions of web-based interventions including three sessions of either positive or neutral CBM-I and three sessions of C-CBT, one session per day. At post-test and two-week follow-up, participants completed the baseline measures. A combined positive CBM-I + C-CBT produced less negative interpretations of ambiguous situations than neutral CBM-I + C-CBT. The results also showed that both positive CBM-I + C-CBT and neutral CBM-I + C-CBT reduced social anxiety and cognitive distortions as well as improving work and social adjustment. However, greater effect sizes were observed in the positive CBM-I + C-CBT condition than the control. This indicates that adding positive CBM-I to C-CBT enhanced the training effects on social anxiety, cognitive distortions, and social and work adjustment compared to the neutral CBM-I + C-CBT condition.

A review of the cognitive effects observed in humans following acute supplementation with flavonoids, and their associated mechanisms of action

Flavonoids are polyphenolic compounds found in varying concentrations in many plant-based foods. Recent studies suggest that flavonoids can be beneficial to both cognitive and physiological health. Long term flavonoid supplementation over a period of weeks or months has been extensively investigated and reviewed, particularly with respect to cognitive ageing and neurodegenerative disease. Significantly less focus has been directed towards the short term effects of single doses of flavonoids on cognition. Here, we review 21 such studies with particular emphasis on the subclass and dose of flavonoids administered, the cognitive domains affected by flavonoid supplementation, and the effect size of the response. The emerging evidence suggests that flavonoids may be beneficial to attention, working memory, and psychomotor processing speed in a general population. Episodic memory effects are less well defined and may be restricted to child or older adult populations. The evidence also points towards a dose-dependent effect of flavonoids, but the physiological mechanisms of action remain unclear. Overall, there is encouraging evidence that flavonoid supplementation can benefit cognitive outcomes within an acute time frame of 0–6 h. But larger studies, combining cognitive and physiological measures, are needed to strengthen the evidence base.

What controls the vertical distribution of aerosol? Relationships between process sensitivity in HadGEM3–UKCA and inter-model variation from AeroCom Phase II

The vertical profile of aerosol is important for its radiative effects, but weakly constrained by observations on the global scale, and highly variable among different models. To investigate the controlling factors in one particular model, we investigate the effects of individual processes in HadGEM3–UKCA and compare the resulting diversity of aerosol vertical profiles with the inter-model diversity from the AeroCom Phase II control experiment. In this way we show that (in this model at least) the vertical profile is controlled by a relatively small number of processes, although these vary among aerosol components and particle sizes. We also show that sufficiently coarse variations in these processes can produce a similar diversity to that among different models in terms of the global-mean profile and, to a lesser extent, the zonal-mean vertical position. However, there are features of certain models' profiles that cannot be reproduced, suggesting the influence of further structural differences between models. In HadGEM3–UKCA, convective transport is found to be very important in controlling the vertical profile of all aerosol components by mass. In-cloud scavenging is very important for all except mineral dust. Growth by condensation is important for sulfate and carbonaceous aerosol (along with aqueous oxidation for the former and ageing by soluble material for the latter). The vertical extent of biomass-burning emissions into the free troposphere is also important for the profile of carbonaceous aerosol. Boundary-layer mixing plays a dominant role for sea salt and mineral dust, which are emitted only from the surface. Dry deposition and below-cloud scavenging are important for the profile of mineral dust only. In this model, the microphysical processes of nucleation, condensation and coagulation dominate the vertical profile of the smallest particles by number (e.g. total CN  >  3 nm), while the profiles of larger particles (e.g. CN  >  100 nm) are controlled by the same processes as the component mass profiles, plus the size distribution of primary emissions. We also show that the processes that affect the AOD-normalised radiative forcing in the model are predominantly those that affect the vertical mass distribution, in particular convective transport, in-cloud scavenging, aqueous oxidation, ageing and the vertical extent of biomass-burning emissions.