The Determinants of Women’s Empowerment in Bangladesh: The Role of Partner’s Attitudes and Participation in Microcredit Programmes

This paper employs data from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (2004) to explore how women’s empowerment is related to partner’s attitudes, participation in microcredit programmes and a set of other socio-economic factors. We use a structural equation model with categorical observed variables. We get that participation in microcredit programmes has a positive impact on both the empowerment’s dimensions considered, while partner’s attitudes effect is weaker, proving that gender community norms are likely to be rooted in women’s minds regardless of the partners’ perceptions of women’s status.     

Sex Positive: Feminism,Queer Theory,and the Politics of Transgression

From the feminist ‘sex wars’ of the 1980s to the queer theory and politics of the 1990s, debates about the politics of sexuality have been at the forefront of contemporary theoretical, social, and political demands. This article seeks to intervene in these debates by challenging the terms through which they have been defined. Investigating the importance of ‘sex positivity’ and transgression as conceptual features of feminist and queer discourses, this essay calls for a new focus on the political and material effects of pro-sexuality.     

The paradoxes of the ‘everyday’: scrutinising the local turn in peace building

With the advent of the local turn in the mid-2000s, critical approaches have attempted to rethink peace building from the bottom up, placing local agents at the centre of the debate, declaring the end of top-down governance and affirming the fragmented, complex and plural nature of the social milieu. While local turn approaches have become popular in peace-building theory, this article invites the reader to question and problematise the local turn’s use of the concept of ‘everyday’, in order to explore paradoxes and contradictions that indicate the need to think more deeply about the impact of the local turn’s project of critique.     

Cyanide and amygdalin as indicators of the presence of bitter almonds in imported raw almonds

Abstract: Consumer complaints received by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in August 2010 about raw organic almonds tasting “bitter” opened an investigation into the presence of bitter almonds in the imported product. Bitter almonds (Prunus amygdalus) contain the cyanogenic glucoside amygdalin, which hydrolyzes to produce cyanide. Ultraviolet–visible spectrophotometry was used to detect and quantitate cyanide, and liquid chromatography‐mass spectrometry was utilized to detect amygdalin in the submitted samples. Control bitter almonds were found to contain 1.4 mg cyanide/g and an estimated level of 20–25 mg amygdalin/g. The questioned samples contained between 14 and 42 μg cyanide/g and were positive for the presence of amygdalin. Sweet almonds were found to be negative for both compounds, at levels of detection of 4 μg cyanide/g and 200 μg amygdalin/g.     

Determinants of the university technology transfer policy-mix: a cross-national analysis of gap-funding instruments

University–industry technology transfer (TT) has become increasingly institutionalized and is supported by numerous reforms and initiatives at the national, regional and university levels. Most countries have implemented a policy mix involving a range of instruments to support the commercialization of research. Still, there is no systematic evidence indicating why the mix of policy instruments differs between countries. This study offers a novel cross-national investigation of the policy mix emphasizing the level of centralization and decentralization of policy instruments. We map and analyze two specific types of public instruments aimed at addressing the so-called funding gap in TT: proof of concept programs (POCs) and university-oriented seed funds (USFs). Based on a survey across 21 European countries, we find that such instruments are widely used but are organized differently depending on the level of implementation of TT practices in the country and the specific type of instrument considered. More precisely, we find a U-shaped relationship between the use of centralized gap-funding instruments and the country’s implementation of TT practices. Moreover, the type of gap-funding instrument (POC or USF) moderates this relationship. We discuss the implications of our findings and suggest that the policy mix of gap-funding instruments evolve with the maturity of the national TT infrastructure.