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The potential and limitations of community-led urban agriculture in the Brazilian urban periphery
Get PDFThis article examines the potential and limitations of community-led urban agriculture in São Paulo’s periphery through the case of Mulheres do GAU, a women-led collective. The initiative demonstrates how urban gardens can foster social inclusion, female empowerment, and healthier food practices. However, reliance on short-term funding and external markets undermines sustainability and limits contributions to local food security. The article argues that integrating such projects into government-backed social protection networks is essential to strengthen their role in addressing urban poverty, inequality, and food insecurity in Brazil
God’s theatre: global conceptions of space in the Early Modern Mennonite Diaspora, c. 1550-1800
Get PDFIn 1598 the Schottland Bible, a large, printed volume, was produced for the Danzig Mennonites, decorated with maps. Space and landscape were essential to their self-conception. This chapter offers an original way of conceptualizing global Protestant cultures through an examination of the interconnected spaces in early modern Mennonite diasporic communities. This chapter will focus in particular on the way in which Mennonites who migrated from the Netherlands to the Vistula delta in the sixteenth century expressed connected confessional identities through space. Space is essential if scholarship is to construct a narrative of global Protestantisms. Lacking the notion of the universal church which connects global Catholic cultures, scholars of the global in early modern Protestantism face a challenge in the spatial frameworks they might adopt. The chapter will focus on three types of Mennonite space – past, present, and future – as a way of reconceptualizing global Protestantisms
Paradoxical career strengths and successes of ADHD adults: an evolving narrative
Get PDFPurpose: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neuro-developmental condition that has frequently been pathologised in career research and broader society to date. The study seeks to reframe such assumptions through a qualitative positive-focused exploration of career stories of ADHD adults, elicited through a strength-focused technique with wide applicability for coaching and other career-based development activities.
Design/methodology/approach: Situated in a strength-focused coaching psychology paradigm, the authors undertook semi-structured interviews with 17 participants, using an adapted feedforward interview technique (FFI) rooted in positive psychology (PP), to investigate individuals' strengths and successful career experiences.
Findings: Narrative thematic analysis of the transcripts identified two core themes: “the paradoxical nature of strengths” and “career success as an evolving narrative”. The participants described how they have achieved career success both “in spite of” and “because of” ADHD. The use of the FFI demonstrated a helpful and easily taught method for eliciting personal narratives of success and strengths, an essential foundation to any coaching process.
Originality/value: This research provides a nuanced overview, and an associated conceptual model, of how adults with ADHD perceive their career-based strengths and experiences of success. Further, the research shows the value of using a positive psychological coaching approach when working with neurominority individuals, using a successful adaptation of the FFI. The authors hope that the documentation of this technique and the resulting insights will offer important guidance for managers as coaches and internal and external career coaches, as well as providing positive and relatable narrative resources for ADHD adults
The Atomwaffen Division: the myth of evidence-based policy on the threat of far-right extremism
Get PDFThe threat posed by Far-Right groups continues to be espoused by Government, law enforcement agencies, and the media. However, most citizens will have no personal experience of the type of physical or mental harm these groups have the potential to inflict. Indeed, the public’s perception of the risk is derived from their engagement with published government reports and mass media coverage. Drawing on the National Socialist Order ((NSO), previously known as the Atomwaffen Division, as a case study, this study argues that the academic and policy literature regarding the NSO tends to inflate and sensationalize the actual threat posed. Significantly, prevention and countering actions by this group seem to lack an evidence-based approach. For example, whilst it appears that the NSO may promote a future violent race war and celebrate individual acts of extremist violence, the group shows a reluctance to embrace the role of a fully-fledged terrorist organization. This chapter addresses a gap in the literature on the NSO by engaging critically with the group’s own literature and that of individuals who influence its activities, highlighting key indicators that potentially evidence a reluctance for terrorist violence. The growing body of research conducted on the publication Siege by James Mason and the propaganda produced by the NSO, highlighs how it propels neo-Nazis towards violent action; however, little evaluation has been conducted foregrounding the indications within both which steer the NSO’s membership away from committing violent action. Consequently, this raises the potential for the misinterpretation of the group’s short and long-term goals and an amplified representation of the threat to public safety. Drawing on Beck’s Risk Society and Busher et al.’s Internal Breaks this study illustrates the tension between inflated perceptions of risk and actual threat; it intendes to offer the reader a revisionist approach to the definition the problem and underlining assumptions of extremism and terrorism
Routledge handbook of childhood studies and global development
No full textBook synopsis: The Routledge Handbook of Childhood Studies and Global Development explores how global development agendas and processes of economic development influence children’s lives. It demonstrates that children are not only the frequent targets or objects of development but that they also shape and influence processes of economic, political and sociocultural development.
The handbook makes the case for the importance of placing children at the heart of development debates and demonstrates how researchers, policymakers and practitioners can engage children in development. Through reports on field research as well as a critical engagement with theories in development studies and childhood studies, contributors contest normative assumptions about childhood and global development. They tease out and tease apart the complex social, historical, cultural, economic, epidemiological, ecological, geopolitical, and institutional processes transforming what it means to be young in the world today.
Showcasing research from both established scholars and early career researchers, and with particular prominence given to the work of authors from the global south, this book will be an essential reference for policymakers, practitioners, and for researchers and students across childhood studies, education, geography, sociology, and global development
Aristotle on women's virtues
Get PDFOn the basis of Aristotle’s writings, this chapter will argue that the differences between the virtues of men and those of women do not show ethical weaknesses in women However, there are ways that women, due to biology or politics or both, can never, for Aristotle, reach the same level of virtuousness as their male peers. The two sexes operate in differently valued realms - men run cities; women run households. While this limits women’s political involvement, it does not render them incapable of virtue; on the contrary, the bad fortune of being born a woman is to be mitigated by the central importance to the community of their characters. For Aristotle, without virtuous women, the city would fail to flourish. However, there are still reasons to disparage his attitude; given his views about political organization and the position of the household, women’s virtues will find expression privately rather than publicly. He explicitly values the public and political realm, the realm of men, above that of the home, even though the former depends on the good functioning of the latter
Um Guia de Viagem Pela Idade Média
No full textUma viagem fascinante pelo mundo medieval visto pelos olhos dos viajantes da época.
Da Europa Ocidental ao Extremo Oriente, da Rota da Seda às místicas Istambul e Jerusalém, Anthony Bale dá vida à História, convidando o leitor a viajar por um mundo medieval marcado por lugares quase inimagináveis e por incidentes exóticos.
Prepare-se para caminhar ao lado de peregrinos, comerciantes, aventureiros, espiões e soldados, visitando bordéis, latrinas nauseabundas e locais sumptuosos, onde vai conhecer a verdadeira experiência medieval, sentir os odores, os sabores, e entrar na cabeça e no coração dos homens e das mulheres da Idade Média.
Utilizando relatos inéditos, e criando um atlas vivo que esbate as distinções entre lugares reais e imaginados, o autor oferece-nos uma enciclopédia de histórias e pessoas espantosas, mas igualmente uma compreensão vívida e inesquecível de como as populações medievais entendiam o seu mundo
A community effort to optimize sequence-based deep learning models of gene regulation
Get PDFA systematic evaluation of how model architectures and training strategies impact genomics model performance is needed. To address this gap, we held a DREAM Challenge where competitors trained models on a dataset of millions of random promoter DNA sequences and corresponding expression levels, experimentally determined in yeast. For a robust evaluation of the models, we designed a comprehensive suite of benchmarks encompassing various sequence types. All top-performing models used neural networks but diverged in architectures and training strategies. To dissect how architectural and training choices impact performance, we developed the Prix Fixe framework to divide models into modular building blocks. We tested all possible combinations for the top three models, further improving their performance. The DREAM Challenge models not only achieved state-of-the-art results on our comprehensive yeast dataset but also consistently surpassed existing benchmarks on Drosophila and human genomic datasets, demonstrating the progress that can be driven by gold-standard genomics datasets
Microbe-mineral interactions in the microstromatolitic crusts of the lacustrine chimneys and volcanic bedrock of Lake Abhe, Republic of Djibouti
Get PDFUtilising a multi-analytical approach, we investigated centimetre-scale domical and tabular microstromatolitic encrustations from Lake Abhe, a hyperalkaline and hypersaline environment in the Afar Rift, Djibouti. We explored the complex interactions between microorganisms and sediments, alongside the preservation potential of microfossils in this extreme setting. Using optical and scanning electron microscopy, we found that the microstromatolitic crusts exhibit both abiogenic and biogenic characteristics and fabrics, influenced by the mixing of lacustrine and hydrothermal fluids and microbial activity. Microcolumnar fabrics, composed of micrite and microsparite laminae, likely formed in calm, supersaturated water conditions and were mediated by microbial mineralisation. Crystalline fabrics, on the other hand, appear to originate from inorganic processes, followed by early diagenetic growth of larger crystals of Mg-calcite. Filamentous cyanobacterial sheaths, preserved within the crusts and often perpendicular to laminations, suggest a photosynthetic growth mode. Extracellular polymeric substances played a key role in microbial carbonate formation by providing nucleation sites for mineral precipitation and anchoring microbes to their substrates. Raman microspectroscopy reveals a concentration of carbonaceous materials within the carbonate matrix; these are closely associated with filamentous sheaths, suggesting their biological origin. The preservation of these biogenic components is also linked to the presence of Mg-bearing silicates, which are likely tied to microbial activity and high pH conditions, consistent with observations in other alkaline lacustrine systems. This study offers insights into microbial carbonate formation and biosignature preservation in extreme alkaline environments, contributing to our understanding of early Earth microbial ecosystems
The frustrations of free trade and the Africa–European Union Samoa Agreement
Get PDFThe Samoa Agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) includes strict language on concluding controversial Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between their members. Skeptical OACPS members have instead called for greater intra-African economic integration embodied in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). However, there are concerns that the EU aims to use the AfCFTA as a stepping-stone for a vast bicontinental free trade zone. Building upon elite interviews with African diplomatic officials, this article questions whether the pan-Africanism at the heart of the AfCFTA is compatible with the more integrative Eurafrican agenda embodied in the Samoa Agreement
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