Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals I: The Missing Link

When the General Assembly adopted the Millennium Declaration in 2000 and, a year later, the Millennium Development Goals, an explicit commitment to the reproductive rights of women was nowhere to be found

Cosmology at the Millennium

One hundred years ago we did not know how stars generate energy, the age of the Universe was thought to be only millions of years, and our Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy known. Today, we know that we live in an evolving and expanding Universe comprising billions of galaxies, all held together by dark matter. With the hot big-bang model, we can trace the evolution of the Universe from the hot soup of quarks and leptons that existed a fraction of a second after the beginning to the formation of galaxies a few billion years later, and finally to the Universe we see today 13 billion years after the big bang, with its clusters of galaxies, superclusters, voids, and great walls. The attractive force of gravity acting on tiny primeval inhomogeneities in the distribution of matter gave rise to all the structure seen today. A paradigm based upon deep connections between cosmology and elementary particle physics -- inflation + cold dark matter -- holds the promise of extending our understanding to an even more fundamental level and much earlier times, as well as shedding light on the unification of the forces and particles of nature. As we enter the 21st century, a flood of observations is testing this paradigm.Comment: 44 pages LaTeX with 14 eps figures. To be published in the Centennial Volume of Reviews of Modern Physic

The state of well-being in South East Asia at the turn of the new millennium and a decade after

Recent writings on the state of the world today are often laced with alarming notes on the impending doom of mankind. Such notes pertain, among others, to the increasing economic discrepancies between the rich and the poor, the rapid increase in population growth, the cumulative destruction of the natural habitat and the rapidly growing powers unleashed by modern science and technology. They all signify issues, problems and challenges that countries and nations inherit from the last millennium. While the Southeast Asian region is no exception to this rule of living, even in the early decade of the new millennium, the curious question is how exactly do Southeast Asian countries comparatively fare in this context? This paper attempts to give an initial and tentative picture of the state of well-being of the Southeast Asian nations by analysing four major indicators, namely, GDP, unemployment, health and literacy. Lack of comparable data notwithstanding, it was found that a decade into the new millennium the region’s patterns of disparities persisted with Singapore heading the wellbeing list followed by Brunei, Malaysia and the rest. In conclusion, the legacy of the last millennium endures

Contribution of integrated water resources management towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

Published by Asociación de Economistas Agrarios de Chilewater and the millennium development goals, Millennium Development Goals, integrated water resources management, water resources and development., Environmental Economics and Policy, Political Economy, Public Economics,

The sea in Sumerian literature

Surveying the references to the sea in Sumerian literature, this paper discusses the general idea that the sea is underrepresented in Mesopotamian cultures of the third millennium BCE. The common idea on Mesopotamian civilizations is that these were based on the rivers. However, recent research suggests the early Mesopotamian urban settlements of the third millennium BCE are on the ancient coast of the Persian Gulf and in the middle of lagoons or marshes. Coastal marsh cultures would not only have looked at the mainland, but also to the sea. Through a study of Sumerian literature and royal inscriptions, the historical relationship of the Mesopotamian cultures with the Persian Gulf is discussed. The image of the sea that emerges from literary sources reflects the changes that occurred in coastal region of southern Iraq during the third millennium BCE

Millennium Development Goals and the Impact of Registration on the Performance of Construction Subcontractors in Nigeria

Arising from the quest to achieve sustainable built environment and the millennium development goals in developing countries, the study examined the influence of registration on the performance of subcontractors in the Nigerian construction industry. The principal objective was to find if any relationship exists between registration and the performance of subcontractors in the Nigerian construction industry By focusing on three commercial nerve centers oft he country (Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt), 90 main contractors wer~ randomly selected from the study population of 880 in the register of the Federal Registration Board of Nigeria, 96 subcontractors, 90 clients and 92 consultants were also randomly selected from the population. Descriptive and inferential (Chi-square probabilities) statistical techniques were used for the analysis. The results showed that the registration had no significant effect on the overall performance of subcontractors on construction sites in Nigeria (x = 2. 07, P < 0. 05). The results also indicated that majority of the main contractors (49.4%) give notification to these specialty contractors when they are needed on site. On the other hand, a paltry number of the contractors (33.3%) affirmed that it is left for the subcontractors to monitor the progress of their bidding and final selection on sites. The study concluded that for a meaningful monitoring, sincere attention should be shifted towards registration of subcontractors with the relevant professional bodies and that competitive bidding should be encouraged among the subcontractor

The Marketing Philosophy and Challenges for the New Millennium

The world has changed a lot during this millennium and it still keeps changing. For this reason it sounds logical, that together with these changes marketing faces a lot of challenges which need to be overcome. That is why the second purpose of this paper is to define the challenges for marketing in the new millennium. Both theoretical considerations will be applied to the selected practical cases from international and Lithuanian markets.marketing, marketing orientations, philosophy, millennium challenges, Starbucks, Coffee Inn, the USA, Lithuania

Comparison of simulated and reconstructed variations in East African hydroclimate over the last millennium

The multi-decadal to centennial hydroclimate changes in East Africa over the last millennium are studied by comparing the results of forced transient simulations by six general circulation models (GCMs) with published hydroclimate reconstructions from four lakes: Challa and Naivasha in equatorial East Africa, and Masoko and Malawi in southeastern inter-tropical Africa. All GCMs simulate fairly well the unimodal seasonal cycle of precipitation in the Masoko-Malawi region, while the bimodal seasonal cycle characterizing the Challa-Naivasha region is generally less well captured by most models. Model results and lake-based hydroclimate reconstructions display very different temporal patterns over the last millennium. Additionally, there is no common signal among the model time series, at least until 1850. This suggests that simulated hydroclimate fluctuations are mostly driven by internal variability rather than by common external forcing. After 1850, half of the models simulate a relatively clear response to forcing, but this response is different between the models. Overall, the link between precipitation and tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) over the pre-industrial portion of the last millennium is stronger and more robust for the Challa-Naivasha region than for theMasoko-Malawi region. At the inter-annual timescale, last-millennium Challa-Naivasha precipitation is positively (negatively) correlated with western (eastern) Indian Ocean SST, while the influence of the Pacific Ocean appears weak and unclear. Although most often not significant, the same pattern of correlations between East African rainfall and the Indian Ocean SST is still visible when using the last-millennium time series smoothed to highlight centennial variability, but only in fixed-forcing simulations. This means that, at the centennial timescale, the effect of (natural) climate forcing can mask the imprint of internal climate variability in large-scale teleconnections