Christian Aid and LGBTI rights: breaking the silence

In recent years Christian Aid has begun to explicitly recognise and respond to discrimination faced by LGBTI people globally. A catalyst for this shift was the re-criminalisation of homosexuality in Uganda, Nigeria, and India in 2014, as well as partner reports of rising violence towards LGBTI people in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, breaking the silence on LGBTI issues within the organisation came predominantly through the emergence of an informal staff sexuality network. This article offers a critique of Christian Aid’s journey from being initially hesitant to engage with issues of LGBTI discrimination to recognising that as a faith-based development agency it can no longer remain silent. Taking such steps, however, has not been without challenges or risks.     

Will nuclear power pay for itself?

Will nuclear power ever generate enough revenue to cover its costs? Historical data covering capital, fuel, operations, maintenance, decommissioning, and waste disposal costs, and generation and revenue figures during the period 1953 through 1991 were analyzed and compared. The analysis shows that nuclear power is currently nowhere near meeting its costs. Scenarios projecting future costs and revenues were developed. Analysis of these projections suggests that even under the most optimistic conditions (where costs are cut considerably and revenues climb substantially), the current generation of the nuclear option over its lifetime may be best be economically marginal.     

Spherical regression models with general covariates and anisotropic errors

Statistics and Computing - Existing parametric regression models in the literature for response data on the unit sphere assume that the covariates have particularly simple structure, for example...     

An elliptically symmetric angular Gaussian distribution

We define a distribution on the unit sphere \(\mathbb {S}^{d-1}\) called the elliptically symmetric angular Gaussian distribution. This distribution, which to our knowledge has not been studied before, is a subfamily of the angular Gaussian distribution closely analogous to the Kent subfamily of the general Fisher–Bingham distribution. Like the Kent distribution, it has ellipse-like contours, enabling modelling of rotational asymmetry about the mean direction, but it has the additional advantages of being simple and fast to simulate from, and having a density and hence likelihood that is easy and very quick to compute exactly. These advantages are especially beneficial for computationally intensive statistical methods, one example of which is a parametric bootstrap procedure for inference for the directional mean that we describe.     

Non-Farm Rural Ontario Residents’ Perceived Quality of Life

This paper presents a study of Ontario non-farm ruralresidents perceived quality of life. The researchsought to understand residents perceived quality oflife both in absolute and relative terms. Measurementfocused on indicators of satisfaction with personallife, community and environment and quality of life incomparison to others. A pre-tested questionnaire wasmailed to a random sample of non-farm rural residentsin Brock and Uxbridge Townships, which lie within onehours drive northeast of metropolitan Toronto. Nearly forty-two (41.8) percent of the residentsreturned completed questionnaires. The majority ofrespondents indicated they were satisfied with mostaspects of the quality of their lives. The demographiccharacteristics that were consistently found to havesignificant associations with indicators of absolutequality of life and relative quality of life wereincome, length of residency, presence or number ofchildren in the home and township. Other demographiccharacteristics almost as consistently found to besignificantly associated with indicators of absoluteand relative quality of life were gender, followed byage, marital status, amount of land surrounding thehome and education. Comparing objectively-baseddemographic characteristics and more subjectivelyderived indicators of absolute and relative quality oflife provided a useful way of understanding quality oflife perceptions of Ontario rural non-farmresidents.     

A USEFUL APPROACH TO THE GROUP CHOICE PROBLEM

The problem of amalgamating individual preferences to form a group or social choice has been the subject of much discussion and controversy. This paper describes an approach to the problem which, it is argued, should be followed in certain situations. The argument in favor of the approach involves applying a theorem of Goodman and Markowitz [6] in a context somewhat different from theirs.     

Concurrent associations between mothers’ references to internal states and children’s social understanding in middle childhood

Although it is well established that features of maternal speech are associated with children’s social understanding in the preschool years, few studies explore this relationship in middle childhood. Within the context of a prospective longitudinal study of a representative community sample of families (subsample n = 207, mean age = 82.88 months), we investigated concurrent associations between mothers’ internal state language and aspects of 7‐year‐olds’ social understanding, including children’s understanding of belief and spontaneous references to internal states during free play. When sociodemographic, maternal, and child characteristics were controlled, mothers’ references to their own cognitions were associated with dimensions of children’s social understanding. Our findings suggest that exposure to others’ perspectives contributes to children’s advanced understanding of minds, which has implications for interventions that foster social understanding.     

What is a Healthy Sustainable Built Environment? Developing Evidence-Based Healthy Built Environment Indicators for Policy-Makers and Practitioners

Abstract

Healthy built environments place people and communities at the heart of urban planning, encouraging decision-making based on human health, well-being and environmental sustainability. This paper describes the development of a set of indicators to assist in this endeavour—by translating and linking the research evidence base with policy-makers and other practitioners. The paper describes how the indicators were chosen, contextualized and subsequently structured to maximize useability for urban planners and health professionals working together to improve community health and neighbourhood sustainability.