Relationships,learning, and trust: lessons from the SNV–RECOFTC partnership

The term ‘partnership’ has become a watch-word for development organisations that aim to mobilise the resources and collaboration needed to achieve long-term goals such as poverty reduction and sustainable resource management. Achieving effective collaboration in practice, however, can be challenging. This article adds to recent discussions on what makes effective partnerships, offering lessons from an on-going partnership between RECOFTC (Regional Community Forestry Training Center for Asia and the Pacific) and SNV (Netherlands Development Organisation). Key findings include the observation that the role of individuals in maintaining partnerships often goes unrecognised and needs to be supported in appropriate ways; clearly defined and focused areas of collaboration are essential; a formal basis for the partnership needs to be backed with strong informal communication and collaboration processes; and, while partners bring distinctive knowledge and networks to a partnership, some degree of evenness in the scale and type of resources committed to the partnership is important.     

Who Gives and Who Gets: Why,When, and with Whom Young People Engage in Oral Sex

Surprisingly little is known about oral sex experiences among emerging adults, including the motives behind their participation in this sexual activity. The current study examined the characteristics of emerging adults’ most recent oral sex experience. A total of 431 young people (M age = 21.7 years; 71.7% female) completed an on-line survey assessing their sexual history, context (partner type, co-occurring sexual behaviors), and motives (physical, emotional, goal attainment, and insecurity) for engaging in their most recent heterosexual oral sex interaction. The majority of oral sex encounters occurred within the context of a committed relationship and during an interaction that also included intercourse. Cunnilingus was rare unless reciprocated with fellatio. Overall, both males’ and females’ reports indicate that they were motivated to engage in oral sex by sexual desire and attraction to their partner, or to enhance an emotional connection with their partner. Insecurity and goal attainment motives were uncommon. Males reported more physical motives than did females, and females reported more emotional and insecurity motives than did males. The findings provide insights into youths’ oral sex experiences, and make clear how essential it is to understand the broader sexual and partnership context in which a given sexual activity occurs. These findings have implications for policies aimed at the development of effective sexual health education programs.     

Assumptions in the European Union biofuels policy: frictions with experiences in Germany, Brazil and Mozambique

The biofuel project is an agro-industrial development and politically contested policy process where governments increasingly become global actors. European Union (EU) biofuels policy rests upon arguments about societal benefits of three main kinds - namely, environmental protection (especially greenhouse gas savings), energy security and rural development, especially in the global South. Each argument involves optimistic assumptions about what the putative benefits mean and how they can be fulfilled. After examining those assumptions, we compare them with experiences in three countries - Germany, Brazil and Mozambique - which have various links to each other and to the EU through biofuels. In those case studies, there are fundamental contradictions between EU policy assumptions and practices in the real world, involving frictional encounters among biofuel promoters as well as with people adversely affected. Such contradictions may intensify with the future rise of biofuels and so warrant systematic attention.     

A case of fatal intoxication from metformin

A case of fatal intoxication from metformin is presented. The decedent was an obese 58-year-old-woman with type II diabetes, in whom severe lactic acidosis secondary to metformin accumulation was precipitated by acute renal failure. She had been on metformin 500 mg twice a day. Postmortem blood was deproteinated with acetonitrile, washed with dichloromethane, and the resulting supernatant injected into high-performance liquid chromatography system. Separation was performed on a analytical 125 x 4 mm i.d. RP-8 column. The wavelength was set at 235 nm. The mobile phase was acetonitrile (40%), sodium lauryl sulfate, and sodium dihydrogen phosphate adjusted to pH 5.1 (60%) at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. The concentration of metformin in postmortem blood was 77.3 microg/mL. The qualitative result was also confirmed by LC/APCI/MS/MS analysis.     

Determination of the active principles of Catha Edulis: quali-quantitative analysis of cathinone, cathine, and phenylpropanolamine

In the last years, all the vegetable material supposed to belong to the Catha Edulis species, seized at the Malpensa and Orio al Serio airports, were analyzed in our laboratory on behalf of the Tribunals of Busto Arsizio and Bergamo, respectively. After a preliminary botanic examination, the quali-quantitative determination of the active principles cathinone, cathine and phenylpropanolamine (PPA) was carried out by means of GC/MS and GC/FID techniques, which meet the requirements of the forensic analyses. We developed a fast, effective and reliable derivatization procedure which allowed to simultaneously detect cathine and PPA, whose discrimination is mandatory since PPA is not a psychoactive agent. Cathine was distributed in the various parts of the plant (leaves and stems) and its quantity ranged from 0.03% to 0.17% of the weight of the vegetable material; PPA was not detected in the twigs and its quantity in the leaves ranged from 0.07% to 0.16%. The quantitative determination of cathinone was carried out directly on the methanol solution after maceration of the vegetable material, its quantity ranging from 0.02% to 0.10%. No significant difference in the content of the two active principles was found between the fresh and the dried material.     

Genetic STRs variation in a large population from Tuscany (Italy)

Allele frequencies for 17 STRs, together with some parameters of forensic interest, were estimated in a sample of 835 unrelated individuals born in Tuscany, an Italian region. These data were compared with Italian, Chinese, Kosovo Albanian, Romanian and Tunisian populations, strongly represented in this area. No significant differences in single loci were detected, except for Chinese in comparison with all the other populations.     

The politics of state compliance with international “soft law” in finance

Why do jurisdictions comply (or not) with international soft law in finance? This research systematically links international and domestic explanations of compliance by highlighting the “disjuncture” between the international standard‐setting process and the process of domestic compliance. Two causal mechanisms that affect compliance are identified. In the uploading stage, elected officials delegate the making of international soft law to domestic regulators; large, internationally active financial institutions mobilize extensively and, to a large extent, successfully. In the downloading stage, domestic interest groups team up with elected officials in order to resist compliance with international soft law that has negative distributional implications for domestic constituencies. These arguments are illustrated through a structured, focused comparison, and process tracing of the mixed record of compliance of the two main jurisdictions worldwide—the United States and the European Union—with the main international banking standards, the Basel Accords.