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Public-public partnerships (PUPs) in water
A comprehensive global analysis of the use of public-public partnerships in water in over 60 countries
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Public-public partnerships (PUPs) in water
Water operators need to be efficient, accountable, honest public institutions providing a universal service. Many water services however lack the institutional strength, the human resources, the technical expertise and equipment, or the financial or managerial capacity to provide these services. They need support to develop these capacities.
The vast majority of water operators in the world are in the public sector â 90% of all major cities are served by such bodies. This means that the largest pool of experience and expertise, and the great majority of examples of good practice and sound institutions, are to be found in existing public sector water operators. Because they are public sector, however, they do not have any natural commercial incentive to provide international support. Their incentive stems from solidarity, not profit. Since 1990, however, the policies of donors and development banks have focussed on the private companies and their incentives. The vast resources of the public sector have been overlooked, even blocked by pro-private policies.
Out of sight of these global policy-makers, however, a growing number of public sector water companies have been engaged, in a great variety of ways, in helping others develop the capacity to be effective and accountable public services. These supportive arrangements are now called 'public-public partnerships' (PUPs). A public-public partnership (PUP) is simply a collaboration between two or more public authorities or organisations, based on solidarity, to improve the capacity and effectiveness of one partner in providing public water or sanitation services. They have been described as: âa peer relationship forged around common values and objectives, which exclude profit-seekingâ.1 Neither partner expects a commercial profit, directly or indirectly.
This makes PUPs very different from the publicâprivate partnerships (PPPs) which have been promoted by the international financial institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank. The problems of PPPs have been examined in a number of reports. A great advantage of PUPs is that they avoid the risks of such partnerships: transaction costs, contract failure, renegotiation, the complexities of regulation, commercial opportunism, monopoly pricing, commercial secrecy, currency risk, and lack of public legitimacy.2
PUPs are not merely an abstract concept. The list in the annexe to this paper includes over 130 PUPs in around 70 countries. This means that far more countries have hosted PUPs than host PPPs in water â according to a report from PPIAF in December 2008, there are only 44 countries with private participation in water. These PUPs cover a period of over 20 years, and been used in all regions of the world. The earliest date to the 1980s, when the Yokohama Waterworks Bureau first started partnerships to help train staff in other Asian countries. Many of the PUP projects have been initiated in the last few years, a result of the growing recognition of PUPs as a tool for achieving improvements in public water management.
This paper attempts to provide an overview of the typical objectives of PUPs; the different forms of PUPs and partners involved; a series of case studies of actual PUPs; and an examination of the recent WOPs initiative. It then offers recommendations for future development of PUPs
Drug Use on Mont Blanc: A Study Using Automated Urine Collection
Mont Blanc, the summit of Western Europe, is a popular but demanding high-altitude ascent. Drug use is thought to be widespread among climbers attempting this summit, not only to prevent altitude illnesses, but also to boost physical and/or psychological capacities. This practice may be unsafe in this remote alpine environment. However, robust data on medication during the ascent of Mont Blanc are lacking. Individual urine samples from male climbers using urinals in mountain refuges on access routes to Mont Blanc (Goûter and Cosmiques mountain huts) were blindly and anonymously collected using a hidden automatic sampler. Urine samples were screened for a wide range of drugs, including diuretics, glucocorticoids, stimulants, hypnotics and phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE-5) inhibitors. Out of 430 samples analyzed from both huts, 35.8% contained at least one drug. Diuretics (22.7%) and hypnotics (12.9%) were the most frequently detected drugs, while glucocorticoids (3.5%) and stimulants (3.1%) were less commonly detected. None of the samples contained PDE-5 inhibitors. Two substances were predominant: the diuretic acetazolamide (20.6%) and the hypnotic zolpidem (8.4%). Thirty three samples were found positive for at least two substances, the most frequent combination being acetazolamide and a hypnotic (2.1%). Based on a novel sampling technique, we demonstrate that about one third of the urine samples collected from a random sample of male climbers contained one or several drugs, suggesting frequent drug use amongst climbers ascending Mont Blanc. Our data suggest that medication primarily aims at mitigating the symptoms of altitude illnesses, rather than enhancing performance. In this hazardous environment, the relatively high prevalence of hypnotics must be highlighted, since these molecules may alter vigilance
Anatomy and giant enhancement of the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy of cobalt-graphene heterostructures
We report strongly enhanced perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) of Co
films by graphene coating from both first-principles and experiments. Our
calculations show that graphene can dramatically boost the surface anisotropy
of Co films up to twice the value of its pristine counterpart and can extend
the out-of-plane effective anisotropy up to unprecedented thickness of 25~\AA.
These findings are supported by our experiments on graphene coating on Co films
grown on Ir substrate. Furthermore, we report layer-resolved and
orbital-hybridization-resolved anisotropy analysis which help understanding the
physical mechanisms of PMA and more practically can help design structures with
giant PMA. As an example, we propose super-exchange stabilized Co-graphene
heterostructures with a robust out-of-plane constant effective PMA and linearly
increasing interfacial anisotropy as a function of film thickness. These
findings point towards possibilities to engineer graphene/ferromagnetic metal
heterostructures with giant magnetic anisotropy more than 20 times larger
compared to conventional multilayers, which constitutes a hallmark for future
graphene and traditional spintronic technologies.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure
Neutral particle Mass Spectrometry with Nanomechanical Systems
Current approaches to Mass Spectrometry (MS) require ionization of the
analytes of interest. For high-mass species, the resulting charge state
distribution can be complex and difficult to interpret correctly. In this
article, using a setup comprising both conventional time-of-flight MS (TOF-MS)
and Nano-Electro-Mechanical-Systems-based MS (NEMS-MS) in situ, we show
directly that NEMS-MS analysis is insensitive to charge state: the spectrum
consists of a single peak whatever the species charge state, making it
significantly clearer than existing MS analysis. In subsequent tests, all
charged particles are electrostatically removed from the beam, and unlike
TOF-MS, NEMS-MS can still measure masses. This demonstrates the possibility to
measure mass spectra for neutral particles. Thus, it is possible to envisage
MS-based studies of analytes that are incompatible with current ionization
techniques and the way is now open for the development of cutting edge system
architectures with unique analytical capability
Pauli Blockade in a Few-Hole PMOS Double Quantum Dot limited by Spin-Orbit Interaction
We report on hole compact double quantum dots fabricated using conventional
CMOS technology. We provide evidence of Pauli spin blockade in the few hole
regime which is relevant to spin qubit implementations.
A current dip is observed around zero magnetic field, in agreement with the
expected behavior for the case of strong spin-orbit. We deduce an intradot spin
relaxation rate 120\,kHz for the first holes, an important step
towards a robust hole spin-orbit qubit
A narrow, edge-on disk resolved around HD 106906 with SPHERE
HD~106906AB is so far the only young binary system around which a planet has
been imaged and a debris disk evidenced thanks to a strong IR excess. As such,
it represents a unique opportunity to study the dynamics of young planetary
systems. We aim at further investigating the close (tens of au scales)
environment of the HD~106906AB system. We used the extreme AO fed, high
contrast imager SPHERE recently installed on the VLT to observe HD~106906. Both
the IRDIS imager and the Integral Field Spectrometer were used. We discovered a
very inclined, ring-like disk at a distance of 65~au from the star. The disk
shows a strong brightness asymmetry with respect to its semi-major axis. It
shows a smooth outer edge, compatible with ejection of small grains by the
stellar radiation pressure. We show furthermore that the planet's projected
position is significantly above the disk's PA. Given the determined disk
inclination, it is not excluded though that the planet could still orbit within
the disk plane if at a large separation (2000--3000 au). We identified several
additional point sources in the SPHERE/IRDIS field-of-view, that appear to be
background objects. We compare this system with other debris disks sharing
similarities, and we briefly discuss the present results in the framework of
dynamical evolution.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysic
Experimental Validation of a Marine Current Turbine Simulator: Application to a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator-Based System Second-Order Sliding Mode Control
This paper deals with the experimental validation of a Matlab-Simulink simulation tool of marine current turbine (MCT) systems. The developed simulator is intended to be used as a sizing and site evaluation tool for MCT installations. For that purpose, the simulator is evaluated within the context of speed control of a permanent magnet synchronous generatorbased (PMSG) MCT. To increase the generated power, and therefore the efficiency of an MCT, a nonlinear controller has been proposed. PMSG has been already considered for similar applications, particularly wind turbine systems using mainly PI controllers. However, such kinds of controllers do not adequately handle some of tidal resource characteristics such as turbulence and swell effects. Moreover, PMSG parameter variations should be accounted for. Therefore, a robust nonlinear control strategy, namely second-order sliding mode control, is proposed. The proposed control strategy is inserted in the simulator that accounts for the resource and the marine turbine models. Simulations using tidal current data from Raz de Sein (Brittany, France) and experiments on a 7.5-kW real-time simulator are carried out for the validation of the simulator.ThÚse financée par Brest Métropole Océan
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