An examination of the relationship between industry structure, debt and multilateral environmental agreements and environmental performance.

The United Nations established the Sustainable Development Goals as targets to be achieved by 2030. As part of this initiative, countries worldwide are making efforts to improve on their environmental performance. This study uses environmental performance data for 180 countries provided by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy to assess the impact of certain important variables on environmental performance. Among other things, it finds that industry structure and commitment to multinational environmental agreements positively impact how well a country performs environmentally. The same was not found to be true for country debt. The paper also created clusters of countries for environmental performance over a period of about 20 years. The study's results have several policy implications for governments as well as international bodies that seek to promote environmental improvement around the world.

Mask mandates for children during the COVID-19 pandemic: an international human rights perspective.

Epidemiological and physical safety issues form the core of the debate on whether children should be mandated to wear face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Largely absent from this debate are the crucial implications of international human rights law. Although the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund have different mask-wearing recommendations for children aged 0-5 years, 6-11 years, and 12+ years, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child applies to children of all ages. Children's human rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other treaties require decision makers to tread particularly carefully when deciding whether to mandate mask-wearing for children. Special consideration must be given to the potential for any detrimental impact of mask-wearing on children's physical, psychological and psychosocial health and wellbeing. Other non-pharmaceutical interventions for children, such as physical distancing, good hand hygiene and improved indoor ventilation do not engage the legal complexities of mask-wearing and are a safer policy option for reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

COVID-19 raises a health and human rights imperative to advance a UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the inequitable health harms and human rights violations faced by older persons, raising a need to support healthy ageing policy as a human rights imperative. However, international human rights law has long neglected the health-related human rights of older persons. Drawing from evolving advocacy efforts to advance the rights of older persons through the United Nations (UN), tentative initial steps have been taken at the regional level, with states in the Americas codifying intersectional rights obligations underlying health through the Inter-American Convention on Protecting the Human Rights of Older Persons. These international and regional efforts provide a foundation to advance the right to health for older persons. Amid an ongoing demographic transition and an inequitable pandemic response, the prospective UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons provides a crucial opportunity to elaborate and uphold the international legal obligations necessary to facilitate healthy ageing.

Right to legal capacity in therapeutic jurisprudence: Insights from critical disability theory and the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.

This article addresses whether autonomy is being adequately protected within therapeutic jurisprudence models. It first outlines the history and theory of therapeutic jurisprudence - noting that protection for autonomy has been theorised as a key component of therapeutic jurisprudence. It then examines therapeutic jurisprudence in light of critical disability theory and identifies that traditional therapeutic models, which often prioritises the decision-making of professionals, can undermine the autonomy of the individual. The article then describes the protection for autonomy provided by the right to legal capacity in Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. An analysis is undertaken of practical examples of where therapeutic jurisprudence falls short of the demands of Article 12. Finally, the article presents solutions for how therapeutic jurisprudence models could better protect autonomy via respect for the right to legal capacity in Article 12.

Ernest Everett Just (1883-1941): Hero in Cell Biology and Evolutionary Bioethics.

Ernest Everett Just is celebrated for his contributions to cell biology. Among other firsts, he was first to describe the "wave of negativity" spreading around an egg cell from the entrance point of the fertilizing spermatozoon. His accomplishments in biology are celebrated in Black Apollo of Science (1983) by Kenneth Manning, and by a 1996 Black Heritage postage stamp. What is not yet widely appreciated, however, is that Just connected evolutionary biology to ethical behavior (1933, 1939, 1940). He was probably the first cell biologist to argue that human ethical behavior evolved from our very most primitive cellular origins. Today, Just's contributions to evolutionary bioethics, including "the law of environmental dependence," can be better appreciated because his unpublished booklength manuscript, "The Origin of Man's Ethical Behavior" has been preserved at Howard University's Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.

The Rights to Life, Dignity and the Highest Attainable Standard of Health: Internationally Influential African Jurisprudence.

The right to the highest attainable standard of health, existing under a number of international human rights instruments, including Art 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, has been incorporated in local law and in the constitutions of many countries. An important body of jurisprudence interpreting such rights and applying them in particular factual health scenarios is developing. Against the background of the South African Constitutional Court's 2002 landmark decision in Minister of Health v Treatment Action Campaign (No 2) (2002) 5 SA 721 in relation to access to HIV medications, this editorial reviews significant decisions in 2012 by Ngugi J of the Kenya High Court in PAO v Attorney General [2012] eKLR and by the Uganda Constitutional Court in 2020 in Center for Health, Human Rights and Development v Attorney General [2020] UGCC 12. It contends that this combination of high-profile judgments has breathed substance and significance into the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the entitlement to be treated with dignity and the right to life at a time when these rights may assume additional importance in the context of the availability and accessibility of vaccines for the COVID-19 virus.

A historicidade dos direitos humanos e os pensamentos de Bobbio e Arendt na construção do direito ao trabalho e ao lazer / The historicity of human rights and the thoughts of Bobbio and Arendt in the construction of the right to work and leisure

A partir das premissas apontadas por Norberto Bobbio em sua obra "A Era dos Direitos" e por Hannah Arendt, em sua obra "A condição Humana", verifica-se a historicidade dos Direitos Humanos e sua influência no ordenamento jurídico brasileiro, particularmente na Constituição Federal de 1988 e na construção teórica, positivação e efetividade do direito do trabalho e do direito ao lazer do trabalhador. Neste sentido, o enfoque principal está na historicidade dos Direitos Humanos defendida por Bobbio e na importância do direito ao trabalho e ao lazer destacado por "Hannah Arendt.". Também recebe destaque neste trabalho as Cartas Encíclicas Pacem in Terris e Rerum Novarum, que figuram como elemento importante na historicidade dos Direitos Humanos, inclusive na construção do Direito do trabalho.

Based on the premises pointed out by Norberto Bobbio in his work "The Age of Rights" and by Hannah Arendt, in his work "The Human Condition", the historicity of Human Rights and its influence in the Brazilian legal system, particularly in the Constitution Federal law of 1988 and in the theoretical construction, positivation and effectiveness of labor law and the right to leisure of the worker. In this sense, the main focus is on the historicity of Human Rights advocated by Bobbio and on the importance of the right to work and leisure highlighted by Hannah Arendt. " Also worthy of mention in this work are the Encyclical Letters Pacem in Terris and Rerum Novarum, which figure as an important element in the historicity of Human Rights, including the construction of Labor Law.

Accountability for the human right to health through treaty monitoring: Human rights treaty bodies and the influence of concluding observations.

Employing novel coding methods to evaluate human rights monitoring, this article examines the influence of United Nations (UN) treaty bodies on national implementation of the human right to health. The advancement of the right to health in the UN human rights system has shifted over the past 20 years from the development of norms under international law to the implementation of those norms through national policy. Facilitating accountability for this rights-based policy implementation under the right to health, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) monitors state implementation by reviewing periodic reports from state parties, engaging in formal sessions of 'constructive dialogue' with state representatives, and issuing concluding observations for state response. These concluding observations recognise the positive steps taken by states and highlight the principal areas of CESCR concern, providing recommendations for implementing human rights and detailing issues to be addressed in the next state report. Through analytic coding of the normative indicators of the right to health in both state reports and concluding observations, this article provides an empirical basis to understand the policy effects of the CESCR monitoring process on state implementation of the right to health.

[Study on the Estimation Algorithm of the Temperature Based on Mid-Wave Infrared Remote Sensing].

Since objects above absolute zero agree with the Plank law, the objects' temperature is reflected by the infrared radiation. With fast response and high resolution, temperature estimation based on mid-wave infrared remote sensing could realize the temperature measurement for small, high-speed and touch-free objects. A new optical system for infrared (IR) image-spectrum integration remote sensing was used to acquire infrared emission spectra from different temperatures of metal. With this basis, we extracted four appropriate spectral features which were the center of gravity position, peak position, the value of wavelength λ1 and the value of wavelength λ2 from the training samples. The relationship between temperature and these features was studied. A multiple linear regression model was established to estimate the temperatures from the spectra. The experimental results showed that, the method could distinguish hot objects with obvious temperature differences. The absolute error was less than 30 ℃ in the experimental temperature range. The accuracy was 98% in the range that the measurement error was less than 20 ℃, which was better than the 2% precision of the general system with the complex strict emissivity, atmospheric transmittance, environmental equivalent radiation temperature and some other parameters. This method could measure the temperature of the remote objects in a simple and effective way, and so could expand the application field of temperature estimation based on infrared remote sensing.

Human trafficking for organ removal in India: a victim-centered, evidence-based report.

BACKGROUND: Enhancements in the national transplant law to prohibit commercial transplants in India have curbed the trade. Yet, the human rights abuse of human trafficking for organ removal (HTOR) continues in various transplant centers throughout India. METHODS: Beginning in September 2010 until May 2012, in-depth interviews were conducted with 103 victims of HTOR in India in which victims described their experiences of a commercial kidney removal in compelling detail. Victims were located in Tamil Nadu, and reference is made to the broader study that included 50 additional victims in small towns and villages in West Bengal and Karnataka. RESULTS: Fourteen cases (14%) in Tamil Nadu and an additional 20 cases (40%) from West Bengal and Karnataka occurred between 2009 to May 2012. The cases in Tamil Nadu ranged in age from 19 to 55 years, with an average age of 33 years in Erode and 36 years in Chennai. Fifty-seven percent of the victims in Erode are female, and 87% of the victims in Chennai are female. Twelve percent of the individuals were widowed or abandoned, 79% were married, and 91% were parents with an average of two kids. Of those interviewed, 28% had no formal education, 19% had some primary schooling, 22% had some secondary schooling, and no individuals reported schooling above high school. All victims interviewed lived in abject poverty with monthly income levels well below the national average. The majority of victims reported long lasting health, economic, social, and psychological consequences. No matter the reason expressed for an organ sale, all victims reported that they would not have agreed to the organ removal if their economic circumstances were not so dire. One hundred percent of the victims interviewed expressed that they need assistance to cope with these consequences. CONCLUSIONS: Human trafficking for an organ removal continues in private transplant centers throughout India, service to foreign patients is ongoing, and victims' consequences are long lasting. A rights-based response to HTOR that invokes a universal commitment to prevent, protect, and suppress its continued practice is recommended. The United Nations Trafficking Protocol is the key international instrument to address trafficking of persons, including for organ removal. India has signed the UN Trafficking Protocol and should ratify it to better address this form of human trafficking.

Towards a Framework Convention on Global Health: a transformative agenda for global health justice.

Global health inequities cause nearly 20 million deaths annually, mostly among the world's poor. Yet international law currently does little to reduce the massive inequalities that underlie these deaths. This Article offers the first systematic account of the goals and justifications, normative foundations, and potential construction of a proposed new global health treaty, a Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH), grounded in the human right to health. Already endorsed by the United Nations Secretary-General, the FCGH would reimagine global governance for health, offering a new, post-Millennium Development Goals vision. A global coalition of civil society and academics has formed the Joint Action and Learning Initiative on National and Global Responsibilities for Health (JALI) to advance the FCGH.

Early lessons and challenges from the healthy Mendocino community of solution.

Northern California's Mendocino County is joining the national movement to upgrade the quantity and quality of local data available for assessing and improving local health. A broad-based coalition in the county has successfully engaged 20 community partners in funding a web-based tool for this purpose. HealthyMendocino.org, launched in January 2013, is designed to support setting local priorities, planning and evaluating the program, and building community by giving easy access to timely data on 90 indicators of local health and its determinants compiled from a range of state and federal sources. This article, written before the site's launch by the Chair of the Healthy Mendocino Steering Committee, describes the community of solution that came together to envision, publicize, raise support for, and bring to fruition this new resource. Mendocino is a rural county with limited financial capacity but rich social assets, including a strong collaborative tradition and an infrastructure of dynamic coalitions. This article outlines the anticipated benefits, early lessons, and challenges of the initiative and explains how the organizers leveraged connections with other communities of solution that already are working to improve the quality of life in the area. The article also notes ways in which this local initiative illustrates and aligns with several of the grand challenges outlined in the modern Folsom Report-specifically, challenges 7, 8, 11, 12, and above all 13, which concerns the use of health information technology to enable the flow of knowledge to the community of solution.

Sexual and reproductive rights at the United Nations: frustration or fulfilment?

Over the past 20 years, advocates have gained formal recognition for some rights in sexuality and reproduction and established the application of human rights standards to sexual and reproductive health issues more generally. However, careful reflection on the state of norm development across sexuality and reproduction as a field reveals fractures and stagnation in the development of standards, and a lack of synergy among advocates and between frameworks for similar rights. This paper seeks to stimulate a more careful accounting for these realities. It examines the formal processes and rules guiding standard-setting, in light of the different intellectual and ideological genealogies of sexual and reproductive rights. We use (homo)sexual orientation and abortion as case studies of current high-profile human rights standard-setting, with specific attention to the contemporary state of human rights law-making in the United Nations today. By placing these two issues in conjunction, we seek to make visible relationships between the vicious political debates in the UN on abortion and sexual orientation, and the multiple and sometimes divergent statements of independent experts and expert bodies in the UN human rights system on these and other sexual and reproductive rights issues. We offer no answers but seek to highlight the need for more investigation and self-reflection by advocates and scholars on how these forces operate and how to work with them.

Work-related injuries and illnesses reported by World Trade Center response workers and volunteers.

INTRODUCTION: In 2002, the Mount Sinai Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, with support from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), began coordinating the World Trade Center (WTC) Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program (MSP) to monitor the health of qualified WTC responders. Enrolled participants were offered a clinical examination; interviewed to collect medical, mental health, and exposure information; and requested to complete a self-administered medical questionnaire. The objective of this study was to better understand work-related injuries and illnesses sustained on-site by WTC responders. METHODS: A descriptive analysis of select data from the MSP self-administered medical questionnaire was conducted. Data collected July 2002 through April 2004 from MSP participants enrolled at the Mount Sinai clinic were reviewed using univariate statistical techniques. RESULTS: Records from 7,810 participants were analyzed, with most participants associated with either the construction industry (n = 2,623, 34%) or law enforcement (n = 2,036, 26%). Approximately a third of the participants (n = 2,486, 32%) reported at least one injury or illness requiring medical treatment that was sustained during WTC work/volunteer activities. Of the total 4,768 injuries/illnesses reported by these participants, respiratory complaints were most common (n = 1,350, 28%), followed by traumatic injuries excluding eye injuries (n = 961, 20%), eye injuries/ailments (n = 709, 15%), chest pain (n = 375, 8%), headaches (n = 359, 8%), skin conditions (n = 178, 4%), and digestive system conditions (n = 163, 3%). Participants reported that 36% of injuries/illnesses were treated off-site and 29% were treated on-site, with the remaining not specifying treatment location. Off-site treatment was prevalent for respiratory complaints, psychological stress, and chest pain. On-site treatment was predominate for eye injuries/ailments and traumatic injuries excluding eye injuries. CONCLUSION: Study results underscore the need for rapid deployment of personal protective equipment for disaster responders and medical care stations mobilized near disaster worksites. Additionally, the results, many of which are comparable to findings from previous WTC studies where data were collected in real-time, indicate that a screening program such as the MSP may be effective in retrospectively providing general information on disaster responder demographics and work-related injuries and illnesses.

Leaf area index of a tropical semi-deciduous forest of the southern Amazon Basin.

Leaf area index (LAI) is an important ecophysiological variable because leaves are the organs responsible for gas exchange between plants and the atmosphere. This variable can be calculated from primary values of leaf area assessed by destructive or non-destructive methods, which is relatively easy when crop species are investigated, but is not the case when the focus is on natural wood plants communities. In this paper, we analyze the seasonality of LAI estimated by three different methods in the Amazonia-savannah transitional forest, located 50 km north-east of Sinop city, Mato Grosso, Brazil. In the first method, we combine Monsi and Saekis' original method [Monsi M, Saeki T (1953) Jpn J Bot 14:22-52], which measures LAI using the Beer-Lambert extinction law, and the proposition of Goudriaan [Goudriaan J (1988) Agric For Meteorol 43:155-169] to estimate the extinction coefficient from solar height. The second method differed from the first only in the way in which the daily fraction of intercepted photosynthetic active radiation (FPAR) was calculated, as proposed by Charles-Edwards and Lawn (Charles-Edwards DA, Lawn RJ (1984) Plant Cell Environ 7:247-251]. In the third method, we used a remote sensing technique [MOD15_BU-collection 4, produced and distributed by EROS Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (EDC DAAC)]. We found that the first and the second methods revealed the expected LAI dynamics, which increased during the dry-wet transition and wet season, and decreased during the wet-dry transition and dry season. From 20 randomly distributed sets in a 1.0 ha area, only 3 showed significant differences in LAI estimated from the first two methods; conversely, LAI was overestimated by the third method.

[Evaluation of the knowledge and manner of workers of workplaces in Tokat about the ban on restriction of indoor smoking]. / Tokat'da kapali alanlarda sigara içiminin engellenmesine dair yasaya iliskin isletme çalisanlarinin bilgi ve tutumlarinin degerlendirilmesi.

To evaluate the knowledge and manner of cafe, pub and restaurant (with/without alcohol) workers in our city center about the ban on restriction of indoor smoking. To determine the preparation about the ban, smoking characteristics of workers, the knowledge on passive smoking. A questionnaire was performed to workers. The type of workplace, the number of workers, existence of a restriction of indoor smoking, any preparation about the ban were asked. The job of worker, whether the worker has a knowledge on the ban or not, the idea of the workers on the necessity and practicability of the ban were asked. Smoking history and the knowledge about passive smoking of workers were recorded. Fagerstrom nicotine dependent test (FNDT) was performed to smokers. Eighty four work places with 568 workers included in the study. The questionnaire was performed to 337 workers whose mean age was 29.1/years. 292 of workers were male. 190 of cases were current smokers. 166 of cases (49.3%) know the meaning of passive smoking. Alcohol offering was made at 8 of workplaces. Smoking was forbidden in 20 of workplaces. A preparation was performed about the ban in 30 of (46.9%) other workplaces. 88.4% of workers have knowledge on the ban, 64.7% of them know the punishment of the noncompliance of the ban. 81.3% of the workers believe the necessity and 45.7% of them believe the practicability of the ban. Smokers and especially who's FNBT > 5 have a stronger belief on the necessity and practicability of the ban. We determined that the preparation about the ban was inadequate although there was an little time for the put into practice the law. So we think that the controls of workplaces should be happened frequent.

Understanding large-scale deforestation in southern Jinotega, Nicaragua from 1978 to 1999 through the examination of changes in land use and land cover.

Nicaragua, home to the largest remaining extent of rainforest in Central America (total surface area) and to a significant indigenous population, has lost approximately half of its forest cover since 1950. This major and rapid loss of forest cover has been explained as the consequence of an eastward moving agricultural frontier that cuts through the region of Jinotega. If the current deforestation rate continues, the country could lose its remaining forest cover over the course of the next two decades; therefore, it is essential that the dynamics and relationships of land-use and land-cover change (LUCC) in this region are understood. To examine LUCC in Nicaragua over time, Landsat imagery from the southern portion of the region of Jinotega, taken in 1978, 1987, and 1999 was utilized. A remote-sensing method, supervised classification, which allows for the grouping of spectrally similar values for each year, followed by an image change detection analysis (postclassification comparison) was conducted. Groundtruthing (field validation) was conducted in 2006 to validate the data, which yielded increasing overall accuracy rates of 71.68% for 1978, 82.35% for 1987, and 84.38% for 1999. The classification and change detection results showed that if the agricultural cultivation overtook this region, it happened before 1978. Therefore, the possibility that either deforestation did not actually occur along an agricultural frontier or that it was located further east exists; this would be an interesting subject for future studies. There was, however, clear evidence of increased forest cover from 1987 to 1999 near the urban center, correlating with the enforced reforestation law in the city of Jinotega.

Clean switch: the case for prison needle and syringe programs.

In Canada and in many other countries, prisons have become incubators for the transmission of HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV). Estimates of HIV and HCV prevalence in Canadian prisons are at least 10 and 20 times, respectively, the reported prevalence in the population as a whole--and prevalence rates have been reported to be significantly higher for people who inject drugs. Although people who inject drugs may inject less frequently while incarcerated, the risks of injection drug use are amplified because of the scarcity of sterile syringes and the sharing of injecting equipment in prison. Making sterile injection equipment available to people in prison is an important response to evidence of the risk of HIV and HCV transmission through sharing syringes to inject drugs. In this article, Sandra Chu explains why the government is obligated under international human rights standards and Canadian correctional and constitutional law to provide prison-based needle and syringe programs (PNSPs).

Law and public health at CDC.

Public health law is an emerging field in U.S. public health practice. The 20th century proved the indispensability of law to public health, as demonstrated by the contribution of law to each of the century's 10 great public health achievements. Former CDC Director Dr. William Foege has suggested that law, along with epidemiology, is an essential tool in public health practice. Public health laws are any laws that have important consequences for the health of defined populations. They derive from federal and state constitutions; statutes, and other legislative enactments; agency rules and regulations; judicial rulings and case law; and policies of public bodies. Government agencies that apply public health laws include agencies officially designated as "public health agencies," as well as health-care, environmental protection, education, and law enforcement agencies, among others.