With effect from 1st April 2005, UK law was amended such that gamete donors must now consent to their identity being released to their donor offspring, should they request it after the age of eighteen. This qualitative study investigates the views and experiences of those donating in this new context. Drawing primarily on twenty-four in-depth interviews with donors, supplemented by twenty staff interviews and observation in two fertility clinics, I examine how donors make sense of their role in relation to offspring, recipients and the wider community. I argue that donors make sense of their role as “biological” parents to offspring through creative reference to kinship repertoires, drawing on their own experiences of “doing family.” However, crucially, kinship connections are always qualified in some way to show that they are not quite family to donor offspring, and certainly not their “real” parent. Often this discursive work involved emphasising their relationship to recipients or the wider community (rather than offspring), framing the donation as a gift or a public act. In addition, donors drew on their kinship expertise to dilute, reshape or “re-route” their connection to offspring. Ultimately, this is a thesis about the limiting work involved in “doing kinship.” I demonstrate that donors did this limiting work in highly creative ways, not restricted to forgetting or ignoring connections. Instead, I show that not constructing kinship claims can be as active a process as making them.

Denmark is a major exporter of both anonymous and identity-release donor sperm worldwide, and is home to one the world's largest sperm bank networks. The country's legal framework allows for sperm donors to make the choice whether to be anonymous or to release their identity to potential offspring, in contrast to the majority of European countries which require either anonymity or identity-release donation. As such, it represents a chance for researchers to draw comparisons between donors who have explicitly made these different choices. This thesis draws on data from thirteen in-depth semi-structured interviews carried out with donors at a major Danish sperm bank. I suggest that neither the traditional ‘beer money for the weekend’ nor the currently-popular ‘wanting to help’ narrative of sperm donation tells the full story; the experiences of these donors cannot be expressed fully using an altruistic gifting model, but neither are they fully captured in terms of the capitalist exchange of labour; as ‘help’ or as ‘work’. Donor virility, and by extension masculinity, is represented through sperm quality and the discourse of “good sperm”, which then explicitly informs donor payment, complicating the relationship between donors’ embodied experience, their pride in their ‘product’ and the various ways in which semen as a substance is understood: “good sperm” could make a donor into a ‘good guy’ who could help with the falling national birth count, whereas sperm that was “bad” could be reframed as the product of donors’ lifestyles or as ‘good soldiers’ fighting against the freezing process. Donor accounts of sperm donation were also informed by the wider web of connections that are formed through the process of sperm donation: real, potential, or imagined connections between donor and offspring, donor and their imagined ‘good’ recipient, offspring and donor families, and donors and the wider Danish nation in terms of the production of so-called ‘Viking sperm’ and the extension of the ‘help’ discourse through the falling Danish sperm count.

Yes / Since the cessation of conflict in 2002, Sierra Leone has experienced extraordinary levels of involvement from Western donors. Paradoxically, while relationships are often portrayed on the ground as strong with significant donor influence, our research shows considerable fluidity in individual and institutional relationships. The article disaggregates donor-government relations at various levels over a short but crucial period, 2010-16, asking in each case who occupies the driving seat. In so doing, the article interrogates the concept of ‘extraversion’, investigating to what extent government - and indeed donors - has space in which to manoeuvre and how and why government and donors act as they do in this space. The period 2010-16 is of particular interest due to extreme iron ore price volatility and the Ebola epidemic of 2014–15. The article adds much-needed critique and empirical evidence to the debate on donor influence and ‘extraversion’.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Non-profit organizations participating in social activities becomes more and more important, and NPOs compensate for the deviations and inadequate matters that the public sector and private sector are unable to provide. Therefore, whether in education and culture, arts, social welfare or community construction, NPOs will give assistance, and promote the development of civil society. However, some well-known NPOs have been created many scandals. The low operational efficiency and disadvantages of behaviors hit the public trust from the general public. Thus, this study explore whether the donors¡¦ approval of accountability would affect their donation willingness to NPOs. The study collected paper questionnaires 168 and 164 online questionnaires (a total of 308 valid questionnaires). The purposes of this study are: first, to explore the differences about the donors¡¦ demographic variables to the donors¡¦ approval of accountability . Second, to explore the correlation between the donors¡¦ approval of accountability and donation willingness. Third, to provide specific recommendations about the future direction of sustainable development to NPOs. The empirical results show : First, in the demographic variables, the donors¡¦ contribution purposes and education to the approval of accountability are significant different. Second, the correlation between the donors¡¦ approval of accountability and donation willingness is significantly positive. Third, the accountability acts of legal norms, performance evaluation, citizen participation, information disclosure and organizational goals are all significantly correlated to donation willingness. Compared with each dimension, ¡§information disclosure¡¨ is the most significantly correlated. Then, the study makes the following recommendations: First, continuingly accountable, in order to maintain the sustainability of NPOs. Second, maintain the transparency of the operation, and promote the self-discipline. Third, put different marketing plan to different donors. Forth, keep the spirit of the NPOs¡¦ principle and provide services that meet the current needs of the community.

ET charge transfer salts (where ET is <en>bis(ethylenedithio)- tetrathiafulvalene) have relatively simple quasi two-dimensional Fermi surface topologies, making them ideal for the study of the relationship between bandstructure and properties such as superconductivity. Experimental studies of the Fermi surface areas and associated effective masses have been carried out using the Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) and de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) effects. By comparing the experimental results to theoretical bandstructure calculations the strength of many body interactions has been estimated. High pressure magnetotransport experiments have been carried out on the superconductor κ-ET₂Cu(NCS)₂. The observation of SdH and magnetic breakdown oscillations has allowed the pressure dependences of the Fermi surface topology and effective masses to be deduced and compared with simultaneous measurements of the superconducting critical temperature. The data strongly suggest that the enhancement of the effective mass and the superconducting behaviour are directly connected. The results are compared with several current theories of superconductivity. The dHvA effect has been used to probe the superconducting mixed state of κ-ET₂Cu(NCS)₂. A recent model of the superconducting mixed state is applied to the experimental data in an attempt to determine the value and symmetry of the superconducting energy gap. SdH measurements up to 30 T have been used to study spin densitywave formation in α-ET₂KHg(SCN)₄, and the reasons why a very slight increase of the unit cell volume (i.e. replacing the K in α-ET₂KHg(SCN)₄ by NH₄) stabilises a superconducting state. Galvanomagnetic techniques have been used to measure the quasi onedimensional Fermi surface orientation below the spin-density-wave transition, and to accurately determine the shape of the quasi twodimensional Fermi surface above it. The application of pressure has been used to gradually reduce the onset temperature of a metal-insulator transition and to eventually stabilise a superconducting state in ET₃Cl₂2H₂O. The bandstructure of ET₃C1₂2H₂O has been investigated using the SdH effect whilst hydrostatic pressure has been used to pass through the superconducting part of the phase diagram.

Thesis (M. S.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Introduction: Transfusion of blood products, especially red blood cells (RBC) is the most common medical intervention administered in North-American hospitals. The indications for transfusion are diverse but they largely aim at increasing oxygen delivery to tissues to improve patient clinical outcomes. Transfusion can also have deleterious effects. In fact, there is evidence that RBC transfusion may be ineffective, or even harmful in some populations where its use should in theory be beneficial. Seeking explanations for the beneficial and deleterious effects of red blood cell transfusions is necessary. The primary objective of this research is to investigate the associations between donor characteristics and RBC transfusion recipient outcomes. Methods: My thesis consists of a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature regarding the association between blood donor characteristics and outcomes of the recipient, and the development of a framework linking the donor-recipient continuum using data collected from blood donors by Canadian Blood Services and clinical outcome data from large hospital and provincial clinical-administrative databases. Based on the framework, an epidemiological analysis was conducted to assess the effect of donor sex, age and ABO-Rh mismatch on RBC recipient outcomes. Results: Our systematic review found 58 studies evaluating 17 different donor characteristics. Five studies evaluated donor age as a risk factor for RBC transfusion outcome and 17 studies evaluated donor sex. We successfully developed an analytical framework allowing for a robust analysis of the impact of donor characteristics on RBC recipient outcomes that included 30,503 RBC recipients, 80,755 blood donors and a total of 187,960 transfusion episodes. We found that young age and female sex are donor characteristics significantly associated with adverse outcomes after RBC transfusion. Our newly developed framework, as well as our epidemiological findings, have the potential to influence future research in transfusion medicine and transfusion practices.