The "AIDS and MDGs" approach: what is it, why does it matter, and how do we take it forward?

Progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has been mixed, and many observers have noted the tendency for development actors to address individual MDGs largely in isolation from one another. This in turn has resulted in missed opportunities to catalyse greater interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation towards MDG achievement. The term 'AIDS and MDGs' is gaining currency as an approach that aims to explore, strengthen and leverage the links between AIDS and other health and development issues. Drawing from academic literature and from MDG country reports, this article sets out three important pillars to an AIDS and MDGs approach: 1) understanding how AIDS and the other MDGs affect one another; 2) documenting and exchanging lessons learned across MDGs; and 3) creating cross- MDG synergy. We propose broader policy level implications for this approach and how UNDP and other partners can take this agenda forward. Because the MDGs explicitly locate HIV within a broader international commitment to human development targets, they provide a critical platform for development partners to galvanise resources, political will and momentum behind a broader, systematic and structural approach to HIV, health and development.     

Fifty years on: against the stigmatising myths, taboos and traditions embedded within the Suicide Act 1961 (UK)

Although assisted suicide carries a maximum of 14 years imprisonment in England, courts and juries have historically demonstrated a reluctance to convict, most specifically in relation to those travelling abroad to accompany a terminally ill person seeking assisted dying. The possibility of prosecution is still present, however, and there have recently been a number of challenges to the law on assisted dying. During the consultation period of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 (UK) an amendment was proposed that would have legalised, among other things, assisting suicide overseas. However, it was voted down by peers who believed it to be dangerously radical. In 2008 a multiple sclerosis sufferer requested a clear policy statement, should her partner help her to seek assisted dying abroad in the future. After her application was initially rejected, Mrs Purdy was granted leave to appeal and following a favourable ruling by the House of Lords in 2009, the Director of Public Prosecutions clarified the law on assisted suicide, introducing a Full Code Test which includes the consideration of "public interest factors". Although the new guidelines are not a direct threat to the 50-year-old Suicide Act 1961 (UK), it is clearly an historic development: the latest in a series of high-profile cases and debates which have taken place over the last decade. It is suggested that English law on assisted dying continues to rely on a range of inappropriate concepts, taboos and superstitions, and it is from this perspective that the implications for future legislative reform are addressed.     

Is Sensation Seeking a Stable Trait or Does it Change Over Time?

The theory of sensation seeking has conceptualized this construct as a stable personality trait associated with a variety of problem behaviors. Reckless behavior theory posits that increases in reckless behavior during adolescence can be attributed, in part, to increases in sensation seeking. This study evaluated patterns of stability and change in sensation seeking among 868 urban, minority youth (53% female), followed longitudinally across middle school (6th–8th grades). Group-based trajectory analysis identified a stable low group (20%), a moderate increasing group (60%), and a stable high group (20%) each of which demonstrated unique associations with changes in problem behaviors. Stable low sensation seekers reported consistently low levels of aggression, delinquency, and substance use across middle school. Moderate increasing sensation seekers reported significant increases in these risk behaviors over time from levels near zero in the 6th grade. Stable high sensation seekers reported high, stable levels of aggression and delinquency upon entry into middle school as well as significant increases in substance use across middle school. These results lend support to both theories and highlight a need for caution when categorizing adolescents as high or low sensation seekers.     

Are Secondary Variants of Juvenile Psychopathy More Reactively Violent and Less Psychosocially Mature Than Primary Variants?

There is growing support for the disaggregation of psychopathy into primary and secondary variants. This study examines whether variants of psychopathy can be identified in a subsample (n = 116) of juvenile offenders with high scores on the Youth Version of the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL:YV). Model-based cluster analysis of offenders’ scores on the PCL:YV and a measure of anxiety suggested a two-group solution. The derived clusters manifested expected differences across theoretically relevant constructs of abuse history, hostility, and psychiatric symptoms. Compared with low-anxious primary variants, high-anxious secondary variants manifested more institutional violence, greater psychosocial immaturity, and more instability in institutional violence over a 2-year period, but similar stability in PCL:YV scores.     

Business model–dynamic capabilities and open innovation initiatives in research-intensive organisations: A case of Australia's national science agency

Publicly funded national science agencies create value as innovation catalysts and through their scientific and research missions, they tackle wicked problems. Understanding how dynamic capabilities and business model innovation enable research-intensive organisations to seize the market in the mission is key to translating bold new science that has impact. We qualitatively explore how Australia's national science agency—the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)—has pursued open innovation to support business model–dynamic capabilities in an evolving publicly funded landscape. We reflect on the value of open innovation initiatives that have allowed the CSIRO to ambidextrously pursue world-class science while achieving impact.

Points for practitioners

• Dynamic capabilities and business model innovation are strategic tools for publicly funded national science agencies seeking to seize the market in the mission.
• We examine a case of business model–dynamic capabilities in CSIRO.
• Open innovation has been important for CSIRO as part of an ambidextrous approach.