Why Nations Succeed: The Society and the State

The state is essential to economic development because it provides the framework within which such development can either falter or flourish. Unfortunately, much of the empirical work on the subject is very limited in scope and the theory too amorphous. The case studies usually do not analyze trends prior to the state’s colonial experience nor do they identify key variables, but rather incorporate many details without explaining their significance. This study aims to help fill these gaps by including the role of society. Utilizing China, I am able to trace the impact of the state and society upon economic development many hundreds of years prior to colonialism through a “within-case” analysis and then across cases through regression models. Ultimately, this study will hone current theories surrounding the state’s and society’s roles in economic development and provide more concrete direction for future research

A METHOD FOR REDUCING ALLIGATORING DURING THE HOT ROLING PROCESS OF ALUMINUM INGOTS

The embodiments described herein rely on the ability to cast a distinct alloy into the head of an ingot, and to secure a reliable metallurgical bond between the parent alloy of the ingot and the softer alloy. The timing of the addition of the distinct alloy and the composition of the distinct alloy are important for success, and in turn reduction in the alligatoring defect

Strengthening the Baillie-PSW primality test

The Baillie-PSW primality test combines Fermat and Lucas probable prime tests. It reports that a number is either composite or probably prime. No odd composite integer has been reported to pass this combination of primality tests if the parameters are chosen in an appropriate way. Here, we describe a significant strengthening of this test that comes at almost no additional computational cost. This is achieved by including in the test what we call Lucas-V pseudoprimes, of which there are only five less than $10^{15}$.Comment: 25 page

IR-TEx: An Open Source Data Integration Tool for Big Data Transcriptomics Designed for the Malaria Vector Anopheles gambiae

IR-TEx is an application written in Shiny (an R package) that allows exploration of the expression of (as well as assigning functions to) transcripts whose expression is associated with insecticide resistance phenotypes in Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes. The application can be used online or downloaded and used locally by anyone. The local application can be modified to add new insecticide resistance datasets generated from multiple -omics platforms. This guide demonstrates how to add new datasets and handle missing data. Furthermore, IR-TEx can be completely and easily recoded to use-omics datasets from any experimental data, making it a valuable resource to many researchers. The protocol illustrates the utility of IR-TEx in identifying new insecticide resistance candidates using the the microsomal glutathione transferase, GSTMS1, as an example. This transcript is upregulated in multiple pyrethroid resistant populations from Côte D'Ivoire and Burkina Faso. The identification of co-correlated transcripts provides further insight into the putative roles of this gene

Inequality and polarisation in health systems’ responsiveness: a cross-country analysis

The World Health Report 2000 proposed three fundamental goals for health systems encompassing population health, health care finance and health systems responsiveness. The goals incorporate both an efficiency and equity dimension. While inequalities in population health and health care finance have motivated two important strands of research, inequalities in responsiveness have received less attention in health economics. This paper examines inequality and polarisation in responsiveness, bridging this gap in the literature and contributing towards an integrated analysis of health systems performance. It uses data from the World Health Survey to measure and compare inequalities in responsiveness across 25 European countries. In order to respect the inherently ordinal nature of the responsiveness data, median-based measures of inequality and polarisation are employed. The results suggest that, in the face of wide differences in the health systems analysed, there exists large variability in inequality in responsiveness across countries

Street Crime in London: Deterrence, Disruption and Displacement

In early 2002 the Government implemented the Street Crime Initiative (SCI) in response to a rapid rise in street crime and growing public and media concern. The report examines the nature of street crime in the capital during 2001/02 and the early stages of the government initiative designed to tackle it. The study takes an innovative approach combining offence statistics, information gathered from interviews with offenders and those involved in the Street Crime Initiative (SCI) and crime mapping techniques to assess the impact of the SCI. It pays particular attention to how these offences can displace into other forms of crime or shift across time or place. It was precisely these issues which led the Government Office for London ultimately to commission this study in order to understand the nature of street crime across the London region

Driving and sustaining culture change in professional sport performance teams: A grounded theory

Objectives As part of the recent upsurge of work on management and organizational factors in elite sports teams, researchers have focused on the team management-led creation and regulation of high performing cultures. The purpose of this study was to therefore add to a recently developed model of culture change best practice in Olympic sports teams, as led and perceived by incoming performance directors, and conceptualize culture change best practice in professional sports teams, as led and perceived by incoming team managers. Design and method A pragmatic research philosophy and corresponding grounded theory methodology were used to generate a practically-meaningful model of this culture change process from the perspective of UK-based professional team managers. Results Perceived best practice in team manager-led culture change was found to involve a finite phase of initial evaluation, planning, and impact adjoined to the enduring management of a holistic, integrated, and dynamic social system. With the former process acting as the catalyst for successful change, this model revealed that optimal change was felt to primarily rely on the constant acquisition, negotiation, and alignment of internal and external stakeholder perceptions. Conclusions Based on the model's principles, the optimization of professional team culture is defined by a manager's initial actions and never definitively achieved but rather constantly constructed and re-constructed in complex social and power dynamics. Beyond providing a conceptual backdrop for continued research in this area, the model is also a tool on which the practice of professional team managers and their supporting sport psychologists can be based

Take a walk on the wild side: Exploring, identifying, and developing consultancy expertise with elite performance team leaders

Objectives: Stemming from sport psychology’s recent shift to examine the effective management of elite sports team organizations, the extensive, significant, and complex challenges faced by those with responsibility for team performance have been emphasized. Recognizing that most work in this budding area has been theoretical in nature, our contribution to this special issue consequently identifies and critically evaluates some implications for excellence in practitioners who support leaders of elite sport performance teams. Method: Narrative review and commentary. Results and Conclusions: To survive and succeed, leaders of elite teams must: (a) negotiate complex and contested socio-political dynamics both within and outside their performance department; (b) make impactful and consistent real-time decisions; and (c) continually reinforce and protect their programme. To provide an optimally impactful and valued service, sport psychologists must therefore be able to advise on a broad and politically-astute leadership style and, most critically for consultancy excellence: (a) work within a professional judgment and decision making model; (b) facilitate the leader’s adaptive expertise and nested decision making; and (c) operate a proactive, forthright, and straight approach to ethical considerations. Based on these implications, we conclude by providing suggestions for the training and development of applied consultants

Street crime in London: deterrence, disruption and displacement

In early 2002 the Government implemented the Street Crime Initiative (SCI) in response to a rapid rise in street crime and growing public and media concern. The report examines the nature of street crime in the capital during 2001/02 and the early stages of the government initiative designed to tackle it. The study takes an innovative approach combining offence statistics, information gathered from interviews with offenders and those involved in the Street Crime Initiative (SCI) and crime mapping techniques to assess the impact of the SCI. It pays particular attention to how these offences can displace into other forms of crime or shift across time or place. It was precisely these issues which led the Government Office for London ultimately to commission this study in order to understand the nature of street crime across the London region

Health care deprivation profiles in the measurement of inequality and inequity: an application to GP fundholding in the English NHS

This paper proposes a new approach to the measurement of inequality and inequity in the delivery of health care based on contributions from the literature on poverty and deprivation. This approach has some appealing characteristics: (1) inequity is additively decomposable by population subgroups; (2) the approach does not rely on socio-economic ranks; (3) it provides a graphical representation of the distribution of inequity; (4) it offers a range of indices consistent with dominance. An empirical application is provided investigating the effect of the GP fundholding reform on equity in English NHS. The results show that the most equitable GP practices self-selected into the scheme in 1991; evidence of an inequity-reducing treatment effect as well as a self-selection effect are found in 1992 and 1993; the self-selection process reduces and no evidence of a treatment effect is present thereafter