The Conservative Party's Leadership Election of 2016: Choosing a Leader in Government

This paper examines the British Conservative Party’s leadership election of 2016, held in the aftermath of the UK’s referendum vote to leave the European Union. The paper analyses the contest using Stark’s theoretical framework, which assumes that leaders are chosen according to a hierarchy of criteria: acceptability, electability and competence, in that order. The eventual victor, Theresa May, was indeed the strongest candidate on all three criteria. However, electability appeared subordinate to competence during the contest. Electability is usually regarded as more basic than competence because parties must first win elections before they can start governing. However, governing parties are already in office and new leaders chosen mid-term must begin governing immediately. Current competence in office may be a prerequisite for future electability. The paper reviews other post-war leadership elections in Britain and finds that competence normally superseded electability as a selection criterion in governing parties. This finding implies a modification of Stark’s framework

Long-Term Impact of Malaria Chemoprophylaxis on Cognitive Abilities and Educational Attainment: Follow-Up of a Controlled Trial

OBJECTIVES: We investigated the long-term impact of early childhood malaria prophylaxis on cognitive and educational outcomes. DESIGN: This was a household-based cluster-controlled intervention trial. SETTING: The study was conducted in 15 villages situated between 32 km to the east and 22 km to the west of the town of Farafenni, the Gambia, on the north bank of the River Gambia. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 1,190 children aged 3–59 mo took part in the trial. We traced 579 trial participants (291 in the prophylaxis group and 288 in the placebo group) in 2001, when their median age was 17 y 1 mo (range 14 y 9 mo to 19 y 6 mo). INTERVENTIONS: Participants received malaria chemoprophylaxis (dapsone/pyrimethamine) or placebo for between one and three malaria transmission seasons from 1985 to 1987 during the controlled trial. At the end of the trial, prophylaxis was provided for all children under 5 y of age living in the study villages. OUTCOME MEASURES: The outcome measures were cognitive abilities, school enrolment, and educational attainment (highest grade reached at school). RESULTS: There was no significant overall intervention effect on cognitive abilities, but there was a significant interaction between intervention group and the duration of post-trial prophylaxis (p = 0.034), with cognitive ability somewhat higher in the intervention group among children who received no post-trial prophylaxis (treatment effect = 0.2 standard deviations [SD], 95% confidence interval [CI] −0.03 to 0.5) and among children who received less than 1 y of post-trial prophylaxis (treatment effect = 0.4 SD, 95% CI 0.1 to 0.8). The intervention group had higher educational attainment by 0.52 grades (95% CI = −0.041 to 1.089; p = 0.069). School enrolment was similar in the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: The results are suggestive of a long-term effect of malaria prophylaxis on cognitive function and educational attainment, but confirmatory studies are needed

Neglected Tropical Diseases and the Millennium Development Goals-why the "other diseases" matter: reality versus rhetoric

Since 2004 there has been an increased recognition of the importance of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) as impediments to development. These diseases are caused by a variety of infectious agents - viruses, bacteria and parasites - which cause a diversity of clinical conditions throughout the tropics. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has defined seventeen of these conditions as core NTDs. The objectives for the control, elimination or eradication of these conditions have been defined in World Health Assembly resolutions whilst the strategies for the control or elimination of individual diseases have been defined in various WHO documents. Since 2005 there has been a drive for the expanded control of these diseases through an integrated approach of mass drug administration referred to as Preventive Chemotherapy via community-based distribution systems and through schools. This has been made possible by donations from major pharmaceutical companies of quality and efficacious drugs which have a proven track record of safety. As a result of the increased commitment of endemic countries, bilateral donors and non-governmental development organisations, there has been a considerable expansion of mass drug administration. In particular, programmes targeting lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, trachoma and soil transmitted helminth infections have expanded to treat 887. 8 million people in 2009. There has been significant progress towards guinea worm eradication, and the control of leprosy and human African trypanosomiasis. This paper responds to what the authors believe are inappropriate criticisms of these programmes and counters accusations of the motives of partners made in recently published papers. We provide a detailed response and update the information on the numbers of global treatments undertaken for NTDs and list the success stories to date

Re-Imagining School Feeding : A High-Return Investment in Human Capital and Local Economies

Analysis shows that a quality education, combined with a guaranteed package of health and nutrition interventions at school, such as school feeding, can contribute to child and adolescent development and build human capital. School feeding programs can help get children into school and help them stay there, increasing enrollment and reducing absenteeism. Once children are in the classroom, these programs can contribute to their learning by avoiding hunger and enhancing cognitive abilities. The benefits are especially great for the poorest and most disadvantaged children. As highlighted in the World Bank’s 2018 World Development Report (World Bank 2018), countries need to prioritize learning, not just schooling. Children must be healthy, not hungry, if they are to match learning opportunities with the ability to learn. In the most vulnerable communities, nutrition-sensitive school meals can offer children a regular source of nutrients that are essential for their mental and physical development. And for the growing number of countries with a “double burden” of undernutrition and emerging obesity problems, well-designed school meals can help set children on the path toward more healthy diets. In Latin America, for example, where there is a growing burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), school feeding programs are a key intervention in reducing undernutrition and promoting healthy diet choices. Mexico’s experience reducing sugary beverages in school cafeterias, for example, was found to be beneficial in advancing a healthy lifestyle. A large trial of school-based interventions in China also found that nutritional or physical activity interventions alone are not as effective as a joint program that combines nutritional and educational interventions. In poor communities, economic benefits from school feeding programs are also evident—reducing poverty by boosting income for households and communities as a whole. For families, the value of meals in school is equivalent to about 10 percent of a household’s income. For families with several children, that can mean substantial savings. As a result, school feeding programs are often part of social safety nets in poor countries, and they can be a stable way to reliably target pro-poor investments into communities, as well as a system that can be scaled up rapidly to respond to crises. There are also direct economic benefits for smallholder farmers in the community. Buying local food creates stable markets, boosting local agriculture, impacting rural transformation, and strengthening local food systems. In Brazil, for example, 30 percent of all purchases for school feeding come from smallholder agriculture (Drake and others 2016). These farmers are oftentimes parents with schoolchildren, helping them break intergenerational cycles of hunger and poverty. Notably, benefits to households and communities offer important synergies. The economic growth in poor communities helps provide stability and better-quality education and health systems that promote human capital. At the same time, children and adolescents grow up to enjoy better employment and social opportunities as their communities grow

Incorporating non-equilibrium dynamics into demographic history inferences of a migratory marine species

ELC was supported while writing this paper by a EU Horizon 2020 Marie Slodowska Curie Fellowship, project BEHAVIOUR-CONNECT, by a Newton Fellowship from the Royal Society of London and Bayesian statistical training was supported by National Science Foundation (award DEB- 1145200). Laboratory analyses conducted by ELC were funded by a small grant from the British Ecological Society 5076 / 6118 and Bayesian analysis was supported by training from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DEB-1145200. OEG was supported by the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS) funded by the Scottish Founding Council (grant reference HR09011). Genetic data from the South African right whale samples were generated by MB and PJP with the support of UC Berkeley, University of Stockholm and University of Groningen. Computational Biology analyses were supported by the University of St Andrews Bioinformatics Unit which is funded by a Wellcome Trust ISSF award.Understanding how dispersal and gene flow link geographically separated populations over evolutionary history is challenging, particularly in migratory marine species. In southern right whales (SRWs, Eubalaena australis), patterns of genetic diversity are likely influenced by the glacial climate cycle and recent history of whaling. Here we use a dataset of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences (n=1,327) and nuclear markers (17 microsatellite loci, n=222) from major wintering grounds to investigate circumpolar population structure, historical demography, and effective population size. Analyses of nuclear genetic variation identify two population clusters that correspond to the South Atlantic and Indo-Pacific ocean basins that have similar effective breeder estimates. In contrast, all wintering grounds show significant differentiation for mtDNA, but no sex-biased dispersal was detected using the microsatellite genotypes. An approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) approach with microsatellite markers compared scenarios with gene flow through time, or isolation and secondary contact between ocean basins, while modeling declines in abundance linked to whaling. Secondary-contact scenarios yield the highest posterior probabilities, implying that populations in different ocean basins were largely isolated and came into secondary contact within the last 25,000 years, but the role of whaling in changes in genetic diversity and gene flow over recent generations could not be resolved. We hypothesis that these findings are driven by factors that promote isolation, such as female philopatry, and factors that could promote dispersal, such oceanographic changes. These findings highlight the application of ABC approaches to infer connectivity in mobile species with complex population histories and currently low levels of differentiation.PostprintPeer reviewe