Heterogeneity in practice adoption to reduce water quality impacts from sugarcane production in Queensland

A key strategy in reducing water quality impacts into the Great Barrier Reef is to change farm management practices to limit the creation of pollutants or their transmission off farm. However, designing programs to improve adoption in agriculture of Better Management Practices (BMPs) can be challenging because of heterogeneity among landholders and between farms and farming systems. This is relevant to broader issues in the adoption literature where a focus on identifying factors influencing and heterogeneity in adoption have rarely transferred through to analysis and prediction models suitable for policy purposes. In this case study these issues have been tested with sugarcane farmers in Queensland, where the current policy settings are targeting increases in adoption of better management practices from 34% in 2011 to 90% by 2018. The main goals of the study were to identify how rates of adoption for different practices might be explained by (a) the motivations of farmers (b) potential barriers to adoption (c) farm characteristics and (d) financial drivers. The results confirm that measures to improve BMP adoption are complicated by heterogeneity in adoption drivers between practices and across groups of landholders, creating challenges to find effective strategies to encourage adoption

Effective Teaching and Learning: Using ICT

Mellar, H., Kambouri, M., Logan, K., Betts, S., Nance, B., Moriarty, V. (2007) Effective Teaching and Learning: Using ICT. London: NRDC. Available at: http://www.nrdc.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_3347.pdfResearch report for NRDCFindings and recommendations on effective teaching practice - with the aim of providing material for improving the quality of teaching and learning and for informing developments in initial teacher education and continuing development. (http://www.nrdc.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_3347.pdf

Making universal access to water affordable in Zambia and Zimbabwe

As per capita costs of rural water supply escalate, and donor funding cannot keep pace, it will be necessary to look at alternative solutions to achieve universal access in sub-Saharan Africa. Leveraging funds from new sources and minimising costs to government may help to avoid a slow-down in progress to 2030. Results from UNICEF-funded reviews of Accelerated Self-supply in Zambia and Zimbabwe suggest Self-supply is an essential strategy to achieve universal access, especially in remote areas with low population density where many of the remaining unserved reside. Government must adopt complementary or hybrid strategies, incorporating Community Water Supply and Self-supply, if the SDG target of universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water is to be met. Including self-financing in rural water supply strategies will require development of new affordable standards for smaller communities, but could save the two governments almost $400,000,000, cutting the necessary budget by 35-40%

Estimating Counterfactual Risk Under Hypothetical Interventions in the Presence of Competing Events: Crystalline Silica Exposure and Mortality From 2 Causes of Death.

Exposure to silica has been linked to excess risk of lung cancer and nonmalignant respiratory disease mortality. In this study we estimated risk for both these outcomes in relation to occupational silica exposure as well as the reduction in risk that would result from hypothetical interventions on exposure in a cohort of exposed workers. Analyses were carried out using data from an all-male study population consisting of 2,342 California diatomaceous earth workers regularly exposed to crystalline silica and followed between 1942 and 2011. We estimated subdistribution risk for each event under the natural course and interventions of interest using the parametric g-formula to adjust for healthy-worker survivor bias. The risk ratio for lung cancer mortality, comparing an intervention in which a theoretical maximum exposure limit was set at 0.05 mg/m3 (the current US regulatory limit) with the observed exposure concentrations, was 0.86 (95% confidence interval: 0.63, 1.22). The corresponding risk ratio for nonmalignant respiratory disease mortality was 0.69 (95% confidence interval: 0.52, 0.93). Our findings suggest that risks from both outcomes would have been considerably lower if historical silica exposures in this cohort had not exceeded current regulatory limits

The Effects of Financial Reporting Standards on Tax Avoidance and Earnings Quality: A Case of an Emerging Economy

This paper analyses the implications of adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for accounting information quality and tax avoidance. It employs a sample of 119 firms after the implementation of IFRS to test for two related hypotheses. First, IFRS reduces the incidence of tax avoidance as the level of earnings quality increases when firms use internal funding to increase their profitability levels. Building on these results, the second test suggests that the relatively high quality earnings and low incidence of tax avoidance among firms in Ghana is attributed to the adoption of IFRS and the interaction of firm size to equity capital and the strategy of firms in Ghana to finance their operations with debt

Exposure-Lag-Response in Longitudinal Studies: Application of Distributed-Lag Nonlinear Models in an Occupational Cohort.

Prolonged exposures can have complex relationships with health outcomes, as timing, duration, and intensity of exposure are all potentially relevant. Summary measures such as cumulative exposure or average intensity of exposure may not fully capture these relationships. We applied penalized and unpenalized distributed-lag nonlinear models (DLNMs) with flexible exposure-response and lag-response functions in order to examine the association between crystalline silica exposure and mortality from lung cancer and nonmalignant respiratory disease in a cohort study of 2,342 California diatomaceous earth workers followed during 1942-2011. We also assessed associations using simple measures of cumulative exposure assuming linear exposure-response and constant lag-response. Measures of association from DLNMs were generally higher than those from simpler models. Rate ratios from penalized DLNMs corresponding to average daily exposures of 0.4 mg/m3 during lag years 31-50 prior to the age of observed cases were 1.47 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.92, 2.35) for lung cancer mortality and 1.80 (95% CI: 1.14, 2.85) for nonmalignant respiratory disease mortality. Rate ratios from the simpler models for the same exposure scenario were 1.15 (95% CI: 0.89, 1.48) and 1.23 (95% CI: 1.03, 1.46), respectively. Longitudinal cohort studies of prolonged exposures and chronic health outcomes should explore methods allowing for flexibility and nonlinearities in the exposure-lag-response

Heated aquatic microcosms for climate change experiments

Ponds and shallow lakes are likely to be strongly affected by climate change, and by increase in environmental temperature in particular. Hydrological regimes and nutrient cycling may be altered, plant and animal communities may undergo changes in both composition and dynamics, and long-term and difficult to reverse switches between alternative stable equilibria may occur. A thorough understanding of the potential effects of increased temperature on ponds and shallow lakes is desirable because these ecosystems are of immense importance throughout the world as sources of drinking water, and for their amenity and conservation value. This understanding can only come through experimental studies in which the effects of different temperature regimes are compared. This paper reports design details and operating characteristics of a recently constructed experimental facility consisting of 48 aquatic microcosms which mimic the pond and shallow lake environment. Thirty-two of the microcosms can be heated and regulated to simulate climate change scenarios, including those predicted for the UK. The authors also summarise the current and future experimental uses of the microcosms