613 research outputs found
How effective are conditional cash transfers? Evidence from Colombia
Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes are becoming an extremely popular tool for improving the education and health outcomes of poor children in developing countries. An incomplete list of countries in which they are being implemented under the support of the World Bank and other international financial institutions includes Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Brazil, Turkey and Mozambique. While the implementation details vary from country to country, many are modelled on the Mexican PROGRESA. In a typical CCT, mothers from poor backgrounds receive cash conditional on their promoting certain activities on behalf of their children. For their youngest children - usually those below the age of 6 - the conditionality involves visits to preventive healthcare centres in which their growth is monitored. School attendance is the most common stipulation for receipt of cash transfers for older children - usually those between 7 and 17 years old. This targeting of health and education of children is at the essence of the long-term poverty alleviation objective of CCT programmes. Such transfer programmes are also aimed at the short-term reduction of poverty, through the provision of immediate funds to indigent households.
In this Briefing Note, we will focus on the programme Familias en Acción (FA), the CCT implemented by the Colombian government from 2001/02. In particular, we will provide estimates of how the programme has influenced key welfare indicators such as school attendance, child nutrition and health status, as well as household consumption. In this respect, we will update the preliminary results that were reported in Attanasio et al. (2003 and 2004)
Child education and work choices in the presence of a conditional cash transfer programme in rural Colombia
This research is part of a large evaluation effort, undertaken by a consortium formed by IFS, Econometria and SEI, which has considered the effects of Familias en Accion on a variety of outcomes one year after its implementation. In early reports, we focussed on the effects of the programme on school enrolment. In this paper, we both expand those results, by carefully analysing anticipation effects along with other issues, and complement them with an analysis of child labour - both paid and unpaid (including domestic) work. The child labour analysis is made possible due to a rich time use module of the surveys that has not previously been analysed. We find that the programme increased the school participation rates of 14 to 17 year old children quite substantially, by between 5 and 7 percentage points, and had lower, but non-negligible effects on the enrolment of younger children of between 1.4 and 2.4 percentage points. In terms of work, the effects are generally largest for younger children whose participation in domestic work decreased by around 10 to 12 percentage points after the programme but whose participation in income-generating work remained largely unaffected by the programme. We also find evidence of school and work time not being fully substitutable, suggesting that some, but not all, of the increased time at school may be drawn from children's leisure time
Evaluación del Programa Familias en Acción - Subsidios Condicionados de la Red de Apoyo Social. Informe de la Linea de Base (Ajustado)
This is the baseline evaluation report of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer programm
Scotland's aquifers and groundwater bodies
Scotland’s groundwater is a highly valuable resource. The volume of groundwater is greater
than the water found in our rivers and lochs, but is hidden from sight beneath our feet.
Groundwater underpins Scotland’s private drinking water supplies and provides reliable strategic
public water supply to many rural towns; it also sustains the bottled water and whisky
industries and is relied upon for irrigation by many farmers. Groundwater also provides many
important environmental functions, providing at least 30% of the flow in most Scottish rivers,
and maintaining many precious ecosystems.
Groundwater management in Scotland is delivered primarily through the River Basin Management
framework. Groundwater bodies are a key component of this, defining areas of groundwater
that behave in a similar way, both naturally and in response to pressures from human
activity. Groundwater bodies provide a risk-based framework for prioritising action to remediate
problems, and preventing new problems.
Scottish groundwater bodies have undergone a major review for the second River Basin Management
cycle, using the latest geological information from the British Geological Survey
(BGS), and improved experience of groundwater management from the Scottish Environment
Protection Agency (SEPA). A key new development is the separation of groundwater bodies
into two layers: a shallow layer of superficial groundwater bodies, and a deep layer of bedrock
groundwater bodies. This is important in order to help target action. Shallow groundwater
bodies are more at risk from activities such as agriculture, whilst deeper bodies are more at
risk from activities such as mining.
This report provides a summary of the results of the review, which has been a collaborative
project by BGS and SEPA. It documents the process of how the groundwater bodies and aquifers
of Scotland were defined, and describes the hydrogeology of each of the main aquifers.
The report can therefore be used as a technical introduction to the hydrogeology of Scotland.
The two maps overleaf illustrate Scotland’s aquifers and the latest iteration of groundwater
bodies as developed during this project
Co-Administration of Iron and a Bioavailable Curcumin Supplement Increases Serum BDNF Levels in Healthy Adults
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is key for the maintenance of normal neuronal function and energy homeostasis and has been suggested to improve cognitive function, including learning and memory. Iron and the antioxidant curcumin have been shown to influence BDNF homeostasis. This 6-week, double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study examined the effects of oral iron supplementation at low (18 mg) and high (65 mg) ferrous (FS) iron dosages, compared to a combination of these iron doses with a bioavailable formulated form of curcumin (HydroCurcTM; 500 mg) on BDNF levels in a healthy adult cohort of 155 male (26.42 years ± 0.55) and female (25.82 years ± 0.54) participants. Participants were randomly allocated to five different treatment groups: both iron and curcumin placebo (FS0+Plac), low dose iron and curcumin placebo (FS18+Plac), low dose iron and curcumin (FS18+Curc), high dose iron and curcumin placebo (FS65+Plac) and high dose iron and curcumin (FS65+Curc). Results showed a significant increase in BDNF over time (26%) in the FS18+Curc group (p = 0.024), and at end-point between FS18+Curc and FS18+Plac groups (35%, p = 0.042), demonstrating for the first time that the combination with curcumin, rather than iron supplementation alone, results in increased serum BDNF. The addition of curcumin to iron supplementation may therefore provide a novel approach to further enhance the benefits associated with increased BDNF levels
Impacts 2 years after a scalable early childhood development intervention to increase psychosocial stimulation in the home: A follow-up of a cluster randomised controlled trial in Colombia
BACKGROUND: Poor early childhood development (ECD) in low- and middle-income countries is a major concern. There are calls to universalise access to ECD interventions through integrating them into existing government services but little evidence on the medium- or long-term effects of such scalable models. We previously showed that a psychosocial stimulation (PS) intervention integrated into a cash transfer programme improved Colombian children's cognition, receptive language, and home stimulation. In this follow-up study, we assessed the medium-term impacts of the intervention, 2 years after it ended, on children's cognition, language, school readiness, executive function, and behaviour. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Study participants were 1,419 children aged 12-24 months at baseline from beneficiary households of the cash transfer programme, living in 96 Colombian towns. The original cluster randomised controlled trial (2009-2011) randomly allocated the towns to control (N = 24, n = 349), PS (N = 24, n = 357), multiple micronutrient (MN) supplementation (N = 24, n = 354), and combined PS and MN (N = 24, n = 359). Interventions lasted 18 months. In this study (26 September 2013 to 11 January 2014), we assessed impacts on cognition, language, school readiness, executive function, and behaviour 2 years after intervention, at ages 4.5-5.5 years. Testers, but not participants, were blinded to treatment allocation. Analysis was on an intent-to-treat basis. We reassessed 88.5% of the children in the original study (n = 1,256). Factor analysis of test scores yielded 2 factors: cognitive (cognition, language, school readiness, executive function) and behavioural. We found no effect of the interventions after 2 years on the cognitive factor (PS: -0.031 SD, 95% CI -0.229-0.167; MN: -0.042 SD, 95% CI -0.249-0.164; PS and MN: -0.111 SD, 95% CI -0.311-0.089), the behavioural factor (PS: 0.013 SD, 95% CI -0.172-0.198; MN: 0.071 SD, 95% CI -0.115-0.258; PS and MN: 0.062 SD, 95% CI -0.115-0.239), or home stimulation. Study limitations include that behavioural development was measured through maternal report and that very small effects may have been missed, despite the large sample size. CONCLUSIONS: We found no evidence that a scalable PS intervention benefited children's development 2 years after it ended. It is possible that the initial effects on child development were too small to be sustained or that the lack of continued impact on home stimulation contributed to fade out. Both are likely related to compromises in implementation when going to scale and suggest one should not extrapolate from medium-term effects of small efficacy trials to scalable interventions. Understanding the salient differences between small efficacy trials and scaled-up versions will be key to making ECD interventions effective tools for policymakers. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN18991160
The influence of laser relative intensity noise in the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
LISA is an upcoming ESA mission that will detect gravitational waves in spaceby interferometrically measuring the separation between free-falling testmasses at picometer precision. To reach the desired performance, LISA willemploy the noise reduction technique time-delay interferometry (TDI), in whichmultiple raw interferometric readouts are time shifted and combined into thefinal scientific observables. Evaluating the performance in terms of these TDIvariables requires careful tracking of how different noise sources propagatethrough TDI, as noise correlations might affect the performance in unexpectedways. One example of such potentially correlated noise is the relativeintensity noise (RIN) of the six lasers aboard the three LISA satellites, whichwill couple into the interferometric phase measurements. In this article, wecalculate the expected RIN levels based on the current mission architecture andthe envisaged mitigation strategies. We find that strict requirements on thetechnical design reduce the effect from approximately 8.7 pm/rtHz perinter-spacecraft interferometer to that of a much lower sub-1 pm/rtHz noise,with typical characteristics of an uncorrelated readout noise after TDI. Ourinvestigations underline the importance of sufficient balanced detection of theinterferometric measurements.<br
Security Limitations of Classical-Client Delegated Quantum Computing
Secure delegated quantum computing allows a computationally weak client to
outsource an arbitrary quantum computation to an untrusted quantum server in a
privacy-preserving manner. One of the promising candidates to achieve classical
delegation of quantum computation is classical-client remote state preparation
(), where a client remotely prepares a quantum state using a
classical channel. However, the privacy loss incurred by employing
as a sub-module is unclear.
In this work, we investigate this question using the Constructive
Cryptography framework by Maurer and Renner (ICS'11). We first identify the
goal of as the construction of ideal RSP resources from classical
channels and then reveal the security limitations of using . First,
we uncover a fundamental relationship between constructing ideal RSP resources
(from classical channels) and the task of cloning quantum states. Any
classically constructed ideal RSP resource must leak to the server the full
classical description (possibly in an encoded form) of the generated quantum
state, even if we target computational security only. As a consequence, we find
that the realization of common RSP resources, without weakening their
guarantees drastically, is impossible due to the no-cloning theorem. Second,
the above result does not rule out that a specific protocol can
replace the quantum channel at least in some contexts, such as the Universal
Blind Quantum Computing (UBQC) protocol of Broadbent et al. (FOCS '09).
However, we show that the resulting UBQC protocol cannot maintain its proven
composable security as soon as is used as a subroutine. Third, we
show that replacing the quantum channel of the above UBQC protocol by the
protocol QFactory of Cojocaru et al. (Asiacrypt '19), preserves the
weaker, game-based, security of UBQC.Comment: 40 pages, 12 figure
Adult Neural Stem Cell Regulation by Small Non-coding RNAs: Physiological Significance and Pathological Implications
The adult neurogenic niches are complex multicellular systems, receiving regulatory input from a multitude of intracellular, juxtacrine, and paracrine signals and biological pathways. Within the niches, adult neural stem cells (aNSCs) generate astrocytic and neuronal progeny, with the latter predominating in physiological conditions. The new neurons generated from this neurogenic process are functionally linked to memory, cognition, and mood regulation, while much less is known about the functional contribution of aNSC-derived newborn astrocytes and adult-born oligodendrocytes. Accumulating evidence suggests that the deregulation of aNSCs and their progeny can impact, or can be impacted by, aging and several brain pathologies, including neurodevelopmental and mood disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, and also by insults, such as epileptic seizures, stroke, or traumatic brain injury. Hence, understanding the regulatory underpinnings of aNSC activation, differentiation, and fate commitment could help identify novel therapeutic avenues for a series of pathological conditions. Over the last two decades, small non-coding RNAs (sncRNAs) have emerged as key regulators of NSC fate determination in the adult neurogenic niches. In this review, we synthesize prior knowledge on how sncRNAs, such as microRNAs (miRNAs) and piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs), may impact NSC fate determination in the adult brain and we critically assess the functional significance of these events. We discuss the concepts that emerge from these examples and how they could be used to provide a framework for considering aNSC (de)regulation in the pathogenesis and treatment of neurological diseases
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