Public health risk of Giardia and Cryptosporidium posed by reintroduction of beavers into Scotland

Following publication of ‘Scottish Beaver Trial Independent Public Health Monitoring 2009-2014 Report and Recommendations’ (Mackie, 2014), two pieces of complementary work were undertaken in parallel to assess the potential contribution of reintroduced beavers in Scotland to the public health burden of disease attributed to Giardia spp. and Cryptosporidium spp. parasites. The first, a risk assessment, addressing the question ‘What is the likelihood that re-introduced beavers will have a significant impact on the contamination of drinking water supplies with Cryptosporidium parvum and Giardia lamblia?’ (Appendix 1), was conducted by Scottish Government’s Centre of Expertise on Animal Disease Outbreaks (EPIC). This reviewed evidence from data and publications across the world, as well as evidence from the beaver trial and SNH’s Tayside beaver reports, and used this to assess the likely additional contribution of beavers to the risk associated with exposure to these parasites in Scotland. The second, ‘What is the likelihood that beavers will be an important source of contamination of drinking water supplies with Cryptosporidium parvum and Giardia intestinalis?’ (Appendix 2), was prepared by Health Protection Scotland (HPS), Scottish Parasite Diagnostic Reference Laboratory (SPDL) and Drinking Water Quality Regulator for Scotland (DWQR). This reviewed the diagnostics, surveillance and epidemiology of these infections in people in Scotland

Aid and Rent-Driven Growth: Mauritania, Kenya and Mozambique Compared

This paper conceptualises foreign aid as a geopolitical form of rent in order to help distinguish the conditions under which aid is detrimental to sustained economic recovery from those where it is beneficial. Foreign aid shares with natural resource rent and contrived (i.e., government monopoly) rent the property of being a large revenue stream that is detached from the economic activity that generates it, and elicits political contests for its capture. Rent-driven models suggest such contests have two adverse effects: (i) they deflect government incentives into rent-channelling at the expense of promoting wealth creation; and (ii) the resulting political allocation of the rent distorts the economy and precipitates a growth collapse, which is protracted. In this context, the three principal causes of aid failure identified in the literature (corruption, a poor policy environment and Dutch disease effects) are all symptoms of the destabilizing impact of rent streams on immature political economies. Consequently, the deployment of foreign aid to revive collapsed economies runs the risk of perpetuating rent-seeking and thereby postponing essential economic restructuring. This paper compares the varied impacts of aid on the development trajectories of Mauritania, Kenya and Mozambique. It argues ...Africa, aid, rent, resource curse, economic development

Patterns of Rent-Extraction and Deployment in Developing Countries: Implications for Governance, Economic Policy and Performance

natural resources, government incentives, development trajectory

Natural Resources, Development Models and Sustainable Development

This paper starts out from the optimistic assumption that the basic policies for environmental economic development are known but uncertainties surround the speed of their adoption. In many developing countries the key obstacle is poor governance: consequently, renewable resources continue to be mined, non-renewable resources are depleted irresponsibly, and reductions in pollution intensity lag. Recent research identifies resource abundance as an important cause of policy failure. This is because the primary sector remains large in relation to GDP so that differences in the scale of natural resource rents (and in their socio-economic linkages) condition macro policy in important ways. Most developing countries are resource-rich, a condition that engenders predatory political states that deploy resource rents in ways that cumulatively distort the economy so it falls into a staple trap, which undermines economic growth and environmentally sustainable policies. Sound macroeconomic policy is critical to the success of microeconomic measures like much of environmental policy, a fact often neglected by environmental reformers. There are two implications of this. First, in the long term, improved governance will enhance environmentally sustainable management of: renewable resources (by taking account of the total economic value of resources); finite resources (guided by the need to maintain genuine saving); and the global pollution sinks (by flattening the environmental Kuznets curve). Second, until such improvements occur, environmental policies are likely to underperform unless they are adapted to take account of flawed macro policies. Environmental reformers therefore need to support efforts by the international financial institutions to improve macroeconomic management.Environmental Economics and Policy, International Development, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The testability of Ada programs

Software development for NASA's Space Station poses a significant problem; considered the most difficult by some. The difficulty is the magnitude and complexity of the required software. The concerns raised by consideration of the requirements for testing and checkout procedures for the Space Station software are addressed. In particular, it addresses the use of Ada in the development of widely distributed yet closely coordinated processing

Mission and Safety Critical (MASC): An EVACS simulation with nested transactions

The Extra-Vehicular Activity Control System (EVACS) Simulation with Nested Transactions, a recent effort of the MISSION Kernel Team, is documented. The EVACS simulation is a simulation of some aspects of the Extra-Vehicular Activity Control System, in particular, just the selection of communication frequencies. The simulation is a tool to explore mission and safety critical (MASC) applications. For the purpose of this effort, its current definition is quite narrow serving only as a starting point for prototyping purposes. (Note that EVACS itself has been supplanted in a larger scenario of a lunar outpost with astronauts and a lunar rover). The frequency selection scenario was modified to embed its processing in nested transactions. Again as a first step, only two aspects of transaction support were implemented in this prototype: architecture and state recovery. Issues of concurrency and distribution are yet to be addressed

A study of System Interface Sets (SIS) for the host, target and integration environments of the Space Station Program (SSP)

System interface sets (SIS) for large, complex, non-stop, distributed systems are examined. The SIS of the Space Station Program (SSP) was selected as the focus of this study because an appropriate virtual interface specification of the SIS is believed to have the most potential to free the project from four life cycle tyrannies which are rooted in a dependance on either a proprietary or particular instance of: operating systems, data management systems, communications systems, and instruction set architectures. The static perspective of the common Ada programming support environment interface set (CAIS) and the portable common execution environment (PCEE) activities are discussed. Also, the dynamic perspective of the PCEE is addressed

An EVACS simulation with nested transactions

Documented here is the recent effort of the MISSION Kernel Team on an Extra-Vehicular Activity Control System (EVACS) simulation with nested transactions. The team has implemented the EVACS simulation along with a design for nested transactions. The EVACS simulation is a project wide aid to exploring Mission and Safety Critical (MASC) applications and their support software. For this effort it served as a trial scenario for demonstrating nested transactions and exercising the transaction support design. The EVACS simulation is a simulation of some aspects of the Extra-Vehicular Activity Control System, in particular, just the selection of communication frequencies. Its current definition is quite narrow, serving only as a starting point for prototyping purposes. (EVACS itself may be supplanted in a larger scenario of a lunar outpost with astronauts and a lunar rover.) Initially the simulation of frequency selection was written without consideration of nested transactions. This scenario was then modified to embed its processing in nested transactions. To simplify the prototyping effort, only two aspects of the general design for transaction support have been implemented: the basic architecture and state recovery. The simulation has been implemented in the programming language Smalltalk. It consists of three components: (1) a simulation support code which provides the framework for initiating, interacting and tracing the system; (2) the EVACS application code itself, including its calls upon nested transaction support; and (3) a transaction support code which implements the logic necessary for nested transactions. Each of these components deserves further description, but for now only the transaction support is discussed

Economía política de la distribución de los ingresos derivados de los minerales en África: análisis comparativo entre Angola, Botsuana, Nigeria y Zambia

La debilidad de las instituciones es identificada por investigaciones recientes como la principal causa del bajo rendimiento de las economías de los países en desarrollo. Pero las instituciones de los países de bajo ingreso, más que moldear los incentivos políticos, son un reflejo de estos últimos. Por consiguiente, el presente documento analiza el modo en que se esbozan dichos incentivos políticos a través de los ingresos basados en las materias primas. Se centra en los flujos de la renta derivada de dichos productos, como vínculo fundamental entre la economía y la política, y se basa en casos concretos a efectos de seguir la trayectoria de aquéllos (mientras que los estudios estadísticos toman la renta como una caja negra). Dichos casos se fundamentan en la teoría del ciclo de la renta, que postula que: (1) con rentas elevadas los incentivos estatales se desvían de la creación de riqueza hacia un ciclo de “clientelismo político” que corrompe la economía, reduce la eficacia de la inversión y ocasiona un colapso en el crecimiento; (2) la recuperación de un colapso es más lenta debido a la inercia del ciclo de la renta; y (3) las repercusiones negativas de las rentas elevadas quedan intensificadas cuando la renta se encuentra (a) concentrada en los Gobiernos (tal y como ocurre con la minería), (b) destinada a una ideología estatalista o (c) asociada a la diversidad étnica. El estudio utiliza el exitoso ciclo de la renta en Botsuana para analizar los motivos de su fracaso en Zambia, Nigeria y Angola. No sólo atribuye la exitosa gestión de un amplio y concentrado caudal de ingresos de Botsuana a la homogeneidad étnica y al rechazo de políticas estatalistas, sino también a sus incentivos por la prudencia debidos a su dependencia particularmente precaria en lo que respecta a los recursos minerales, así como a la imprevista estabilidad de los precios de los diamantes. Por el contrario, el despreocupado Gobierno de Zambia distribuyó los ingresos derivados del cobre a través de una estrategia de desarrollo estatalista que en el plazo de una década minó con fatales consecuencias la resistencia de la economía frente a los choques económicos. Nigeria dedicó sus crecientes ingresos petroleros a mitigar los conflictos étnicos y, por consiguiente, aplicó un excesivo intervencionismo estatal y debilitó la economía. Por último, Angola quebrantó su economía a través de su planificación centralista. Los conflictos étnicos aminoraron así la esperanza de vida de las elites e impulsó la captación de ingresos a expensas de la creación de riqueza. Las vacilantes recuperaciones de Zambia y Nigeria indican que incluso en el seno de las democracias se requiere una estrategia política complementaria si se pretende superar la inercia del ciclo de la renta a través de reforma económicas