Private concession contracts for toll roads in Spain: analysis and recommendations.

Spain has a long history of using the private sector to help build and operate public infrastructure, particularly roads. This article presents new data about toll motorways. The authors found that contracts in Spain are characterized by significant traffic overestimations and frequent renegotiations, which can lead to toll modifications or longer contracts. They suggest reasons for this and some solutions—both of which have significance for other countries

A cost and performance comparison of Public Private Partnership and public hospitals in Spain

© 2016 Caballer-Tarazona and Vivas-Consuelo. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.The Erratum to this article has been published in Health Economics Review 2016 6:20[EN] Public-private partnership (PPP) initiatives are extending around the world, especially in Europe, as an innovation to traditional public health systems, with the intention of making them more efficient. There is a varied range of PPP models with different degrees of responsibility from simple public sector contracts with the private, up to the complete privatisation of the service. As such, we may say the involvement of the private sector embraces the development, financing and provision of public infrastructures and delivery services. In this paper, one of the oldest PPP initiatives developed in Spain and transferred to other European and Latin American countries is evaluated for first time: the integrated healthcare delivery Alzira model. Through a comparison of public and PPP hospital performance, cost and quality indicators, the efficiency of the PPP experience in five hospitals is evaluated to identify the influence of private management in the results. Regarding the performance and efficiency analysis, it is seen that the PPP group obtains good results, above the average, but not always better than those directly managed. It is necessary to conduct studies with a greater number of PPP hospitals to obtain conclusive results.Caballer Tarazona, M.; Vivas Consuelo, DJJ. (2016). A cost and performance comparison of Public Private Partnership and public hospitals in Spain. Health Economics Review. 6(17):1-7. doi:10.1186/s13561-016-0095-5S17617La Forgia GM, Harding A. Public-Private Partnerships and Public Hospital Performance in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Health Aff. 2009;28(4):1114–26.Vecchi V, Hellowell M, Longo F. Are Italian healthcare organizations paying too much for their public-private partnerships? Public Money Manage. 2010;30(2):125–32.Hellowell M, Pollock AM. The private financing of NHS hospitals: politics, policy and practice. Econ Aff. 2009;29(1):13–9.McIntosh N, Grabowski A, Jack B, Nkabane-Nkholongo EL, Vian T. A public-private partnership improves clinical performance in a hospital network in Lesotho. Health Aff. 2015;34(6):954–62.Roehrich JK, Lewis MA, George G. Are public–private partnerships a healthy option? A systematic literature review. Soc Sci Med. 2014;113:110–9.Barlow J, Roehrich J, Wright S. 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Bull World Health Organ. 2006;84(11):890–6.Caballer-Tarazona M, Moya-Clemente I, Vivas-Consuelo D, Barrachina-Martínez I. A model to measure the efficiency of hospital performance. Math Comput Model. 2010;52(7-8):1095–102.Barlow J, Roehrich JK, Wright S. De facto privatization or a renewed role for the EU? Paying for Europe’s healthcare infrastructure in a recession. J R Soc Med. 2010;103(2):51–5.Herr A, Schmitz H, Augurzky B. Profit efficiency and ownership of German hospitals. Health Econ. 2011;20(6):660–74.Alonso JM, Clifton J, Díaz-Fuentes D. The impact of New Public Management on efficiency: an analysis of Madrid’s hospitals. Health Policy. 2015;119(3):333–40.IASIST. Desarrollo metodológico de los indicadores ajustados 2009 [cited 2015 July 26]. Available from: ( http://www.iasist.com/archivos/top20-2009-metodologia_161215235006.pdf ). Accessed Sept 2015.Hollingsworth B. The measurement of efficiency and productivity of health care delivery. 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Chronic confinement alters physiological stress responses of gilthead sea bream Sparus aurata to acute handling

NRC publication: Ye

Adaptation of barley to mild winters: A role for PPDH2

39 Pags., 3 Tabls., 4 Figs. The definitive version is available at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcplantbiolBackground Understanding the adaptation of cereals to environmental conditions is one of the key areas in which plant science can contribute to tackling challenges presented by climate change. Temperature and day length are the main environmental regulators of flowering and drivers of adaptation in temperate cereals. The major genes that control flowering time in barley in response to environmental cues are VRNH1, VRNH2, VRNH3, PPDH1, and PPDH2 (candidate gene HvFT3). These genes from the vernalization and photoperiod pathways show complex interactions to promote flowering that are still not understood fully. In particular, PPDH2 function is assumed to be limited to the ability of a short photoperiod to promote flowering. Evidence from the fields of biodiversity, ecogeography, agronomy, and molecular genetics was combined to obtain a more complete overview of the potential role of PPDH2 in environmental adaptation in barley. Results The dominant PPDH2 allele is represented widely in spring barley cultivars but is found only occasionally in modern winter cultivars that have strong vernalization requirements. However, old landraces from the Iberian Peninsula, which also have a vernalization requirement, possess this allele at a much higher frequency than modern winter barley cultivars. Under field conditions in which the vernalization requirement of winter cultivars is not satisfied, the dominant PPDH2 allele promotes flowering, even under increasing photoperiods above 12 h. This hypothesis was supported by expression analysis of vernalization-responsive genotypes. When the dominant allele of PPDH2 was expressed, this was associated with enhanced levels of VRNH1 and VRNH3 expression. Expression of these two genes is needed for the induction of flowering. Therefore, both in the field and under controlled conditions, PPDH2 has an effect of promotion of flowering. Conclusions The dominant, ancestral, allele of PPDH2 is prevalent in southern European barley germplasm. The presence of the dominant allele is associated with early expression of VRNH1 and early flowering. We propose that PPDH2 promotes flowering of winter cultivars under all non-inductive conditions, i.e. under short days or long days in plants that have not satisfied their vernalization requirement. This mechanism is indicated to be a component of an adaptation syndrome of barley to Mediterranean conditions.This study was funded by grants AGL2007-63625, AGL2010-21929, and HH2008-0013 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, by the European Regional Development Fund, and by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA NK72913). Germplasm from the SBCC is maintained with funding from projects RFP2004-00015-00-00 and RFP2009-00005-00-00. MCC was supported by an I3P Predoctoral Fellowship from CSIC.Peer reviewe

Chronic confinement alters physiological stress responses of gilthead sea bream Sparus aurata to acute handling

NRC publication: Ye