Redrawing the body politic: federalism, regionalism and the creation of new states in India

In 2000 the federal map of India was redrawn to create three new states, signifying a significant shift in the attitude of many of India's major political parties towards territorial reorganisation. This paper suggests that a new era in the political economy of India - associated with economic liberalisation; the rise of the Hindu right; the regionalisation of politics; and the emergence of a coalitional system of government in New Delhi - provides a new 'field of opportunities' for regions demanding state recognition. The paper concludes that, in this matter, the major political parties are driven primarily by expediency and opportunism rather than, as is claimed, by an evaluation of the democratic and developmental potential of smaller states

After Chipko: from environment to region in Uttaranchal

Although the Chipko movement is practically non-existent in its region of origin it remains one of the most frequently deployed examples of an environmental and/or a women's movement in the South. A small but growing number of commentators are now critiquing much neopopulist theorising on Chipko, and this paper provides an overview of these critiques. It then takes the debate further with reference to a more recent regional movement in the hills. By doing so, the author argues that it is possible to develop a more plausible account of gender, environment and the state in the Uttaranchal region, and illustrate common weaknesses in neopopulist understandings of Chipko and other social movements in the South

Machine learning for the prediction of psychosocial outcomes in acquired brain injury

Acquired brain injury (ABI) can be a life changing condition, affecting housing, independence, and employment. Machine learning (ML) is increasingly used as a method to predict ABI outcomes, however improper model evaluation poses a potential bias to initially promising findings (Chapter One). This study aimed to evaluate, with transparent reporting, three common ML classification methods. Regularised logistic regression with elastic net, random forest and linear kernel support vector machine were compared with unregularised logistic regression to predict good psychosocial outcomes after discharge from ABI inpatient neurorehabilitation using routine cognitive, psychometric and clinical admission assessments. Outcomes were selected on the basis of decision making for care packages: accommodation status, functional participation, supervision needs, occupation and quality of life. The primary outcome was accommodation (n = 164), with models internally validated using repeated nested cross-validation. Random forest was statistically superior to logistic regression for every outcome with areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) ranging from 0.81 (95% confidence interval 0.77-0.85) for the primary outcome of accommodation, to its lowest performance for predicting occupation status with an AUC of 0.72 (0.69-0.76). The worst performing ML algorithm was support vector machine, only having statistically superior performance to logistic regression for one outcome, supervision needs, with an AUC of 0.75 (0.71-0.80). Unregularised logistic regression models were poorly calibrated compared to ML indicating severe overfitting, unlikely to perform well in new samples. Overall, ML can predict psychosocial outcomes using routine psychosocial admission data better than other statistical methods typically used by psychologists

Brexit and UK international development policy

In this article we explore the implications of Brexit for the UK and the EU's development policies and strategic directions, focusing on the former. While it is likely that the operational process of disentangling the UK from the various development institutions of the EU will be relatively straightforward, the choices that lie ahead about whether and how to cooperate thereafter are more complex. Aid and development policy touches on a wide range of interests—security, trade, climate change, migration, gender rights, and so on. We argue that Brexit will accelerate existing trends within UK development policy, notably towards the growing priority of private sector-led economic growth strategies and blended finance tools. There are strong signals that UK aid will be cut, as successive secretaries of state appear unable to persuade a substantial section of the public and media that UK aid and development policy serves UK interests in a variety of ways

Rethinking d/Development

A dialectical relationship between ‘big D’ Development (broadly, the formal interventionist, international Development sector) and little ‘d’ development (the immanent structures and processes of capitalism) is a concept widely invoked in Geography and Development Studies. In this paper, we ask how the d/Development dialectic is evolving under current conjunctures of emergent state capitalism(s). We suggest that, going beyond ‘containment’, Development is ever more deeply inhabited by (capitalist) development; with implications for its palliative and restructuring roles, and for praxis, contestation and transformation

A systematic review of the effectiveness of machine learning for predicting psychosocial outcomes in acquired brain injury: which algorithms are used and why?

Clinicians working in the field of acquired brain injury (ABI, an injury to the brain sustained after birth) are challenged to develop suitable care pathways for an individual client’s needs. Being able to predict psychosocial outcomes after ABI would enable clinicians and service providers to make advance decisions and better tailor care plans. Machine learning (ML, a predictive method from the field of artificial intelligence) is increasingly used for predicting ABI outcomes. This review aimed to examine the efficacy of using ML to make psychosocial predictions in ABI, evaluate the methodological quality of studies, and understand researchers’ rationale for their choice of ML algorithms. Nine studies were reviewed from five databases, predicting a range of psychosocial outcomes from stroke, traumatic brain injury, and concussion. Eleven types of ML were employed with a total of 75 ML models. Every model was evaluated as having high risk of bias, unable to provide adequate evidence for predictive performance due to poor methodological quality. Overall, there was limited rationale for the choice of ML algorithms and poor evaluation of the methodological limitations by study authors. Considerations for overcoming methodological shortcomings are discussed, along with suggestions for assessing the suitability of data and suitability of ML algorithms for different ABI research questions

State Capitalism and the New Global D/development Regime.

Official discourses of Development are being redefined. If the key geopolitical contexts shaping the post-war Development project were decolonisation and the Cold War, the defining world-historical transformations shaping the emerging vision of Development are the expansion of state capitalism and the rise of China. The IMF, the World Bank, the OECD, the G20, other multilaterals, and bilateral partners are increasingly taking stock of the rise of state capitalism, and acting as ideational vectors of this emerging regime. However, this new "state capitalist normal" is also portrayed as carrying risks. There is anxiety regarding the direction the political form of global capital accumulation is heading: with the unchecked proliferation of state capitalism possibly blunting competition, politicising economic relations, and intensifying geoeconomic tensions. This anxiety underwrites the current re-articulation of Development, one which embraces the state as promoter, supervisor, and owner of capital; even as it critiques China's use of similar instruments

Outsourcing the business of development : the rise of for-profit consultancies in the UK Aid Sector

Funding: Economic and Social Research Council - ES/V01269X/1.While much attention has been paid to the ways in which the private sector is now embedded within the field of development, one group of actors — for-profit development consultancies and contractors, or service providers — has received relatively little attention. This article analyses the growing role of for-profit consultancies and contractors in British aid delivery, which has been driven by two key trends: first, the outsourcing of managerial, audit and knowledge-management functions as part of efforts to bring private sector approaches and skills into public spending on aid; and second, the reconfiguration of aid spending towards markets and the private sector, and away from locally embedded, state-focused aid programming. The authors argue that both trends were launched under New Labour in the early 2000s, and super-charged under successive Conservative governments. The resulting entanglement means that the policies and practices of the UK government's aid agencies, and the interests and forms of for-profit service providers, are increasingly mutually constitutive. Amongst other implications, this shift acts to displace traditional forms of contestation and accountability of aid delivery.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The Importance of Conserving Biodiversity Outside of Protected Areas in Mediterranean Ecosystems

Mediterranean-type ecosystems constitute one of the rarest terrestrial biomes and yet they are extraordinarily biodiverse. Home to over 250 million people, the five regions where these ecosystems are found have climate and coastal conditions that make them highly desirable human habitats. The current conservation landscape does not reflect the mediterranean biome's rarity and its importance for plant endemism. Habitat conversion will clearly outpace expansion of formal protected-area networks, and conservationists must augment this traditional strategy with new approaches to sustain the mediterranean biota. Using regional scale datasets, we determine the area of land in each of the five regions that is protected, converted (e.g., to urban or industrial), impacted (e.g., intensive, cultivated agriculture), or lands that we consider to have conservation potential. The latter are natural and semi-natural lands that are unprotected (e.g., private range lands) but sustain numerous native species and associated habitats. Chile has the greatest proportion of its land (75%) in this category and California-Mexico the least (48%). To illustrate the potential for achieving mediterranean biodiversity conservation on these lands, we use species-area curves generated from ecoregion scale data on native plant species richness and vertebrate species richness. For example, if biodiversity could be sustained on even 25% of existing unprotected, natural and semi-natural lands, we estimate that the habitat of more than 6,000 species could be represented. This analysis suggests that if unprotected natural and semi-natural lands are managed in a manner that allows for persistence of native species, we can realize significant additional biodiversity gains. Lasting biodiversity protection at the scale needed requires unprecedented collaboration among stakeholders to promote conservation both inside and outside of traditional protected areas, including on lands where people live and work