Struggling to a monumental triumph : Re-assessing the final stages of the smallpox eradication program in India, 1960-1980

The global smallpox program is generally presented as the brainchild of a handful of actors from the WHO headquarters in Geneva and at the agency's regional offices. This article attempts to present a more complex description of the drive to eradicate smallpox. Based on the example of India, a major focus of the campaign, it is argued that historians and public health officials should recognize the varying roles played by a much wider range of participants. Highlighting the significance of both Indian and international field officials, the author shows how bureaucrats and politicians at different levels of administration and society managed to strengthen—yet sometimes weaken—important program components. Centrally dictated strategies developed at WHO offices in Geneva and New Delhi, often in association with Indian federal authorities, were reinterpreted by many actors and sometimes changed beyond recognition

Reviews

Review of Low pay and the minimum wage, Labour relations in the public service: developing countries, Public employment law: the role of the contract of employment in Australia and Britain, The system of industrial relations in New Zealan

The Economics of Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Abstract It has sometimes been argued that one way to reduce the costs of law enforcement would be to reduce the probability of detection and conviction (hence saving those costs), while at the same time increasing the size of the punishment. Following this strategy would keep the expected costs (to a risk neutral criminal) of committing a crime constant and hence keep the deterrence level constant; it would have the benefit, though, of reducing costs to the rest of society. There are some well-known objections to such a policy. One such objection deals with marginal deterrence: A convicted murderer serving a life sentence with no chance of parole in a jurisdiction which bans capital punishment has nothing to lose from killing a prison guard-there is no marginal deterrence to the commission of a more serious crime or any additional crime for that matter. In fact, so long as there remains any upper limit to the amount of punishment that can be inflicted upon a convicted criminal, the only ways to create some type of marginal deterrence are to reduce the punishments for less serious crimes, which will either reduce the deterrence of those less serious crimes, or alternatively to require the use of more of society's scarce resources to increase the probabilities of apprehension and conviction. It is possible to reduce this marginal deterrence problem, however, by practicing cruel and unusual punishment on perpetrators of serious crimes, i.e. by raising the limits of allowable punishment. Anecdotal evidence suggests this practice is followed unofficially with child molesters and killers of prison guards and hence provides some additional deterrence against these crimes. Despite the theoretical validity of this argument, our society has chosen to impose a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Furthermore, over time we seem to have lowered the threshold of what is considered cruel and unusual. Following Dr. Pangloss, the concluding section of the paper examines why rational maximizers would choose to give up this additional potential deterrence. The explanations depend upon an assumed positive income elasticity of demand for humanitarianism or for insurance against the costs of punishing the innocent. While there are some reasons to accept the humanitarianism argument, the insurance argument seems more persuasive

Peak picking as a pre-processing technique for imaging time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry

High surface sensitivity and lateral resolution imaging make time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) a unique and powerful tool for biological analysis. However, with the leaps forward made in the capabilities of the ToF-SIMS instrumentation, the data being recorded from these instruments has dramatically increased. Unfortunately, with these large, often complex, datasets, a bottleneck appears in their processing and interpretation. Here, an application of peak picking is described and applied to ToF-SIMS images allowing for large compression of data, noise removal and improved contrast, while retaining a high percentage of the original signal. Peak picking is performed to locate peaks within ToF-SIMS data. By using this information, signal arising from the same distribution can be summed and overlapping signals separated. As a result, the data size and complexity can be dramatically reduced. This method also acts as an effective noise filter, discarding unwanted noise from the data set. Peak picking and separation are evaluated against the conventional methods of mass binning and manually selecting regions of a peak to image on a model data set

Runoff and Sediment from Row-crop, Row-crop with Grass Strips, Pasture, and Forest Watersheds

Comparisons of runoff and sediment loss from row-crop with and without riparian buffers, pasture and grass filter strips are limited. Effects of precipitation, landuse and buffer condition on runoff and sediment loss were examined from 1997 to 1999 in eight watersheds with varying proportions of row-crop, pasture, riparian buffers and grass filter strips. Runoff volume and sediment mass from row-crop watersheds were inversely related to the percentage of forest and pasture cover. Forest (n = 2), pasture (n = 3), row-crop (n = 2) and a row-crop watershed with grass filter strips (RC-GFS) had 3‑yr mean runoff of 939, 1,560, 3,434 and 1,175 m3 ha‑1 yr‑1, respectively. Runoff was greater from all landuses in a year when precipitation was 36% above normal (1998). The largest single runoff event from each watershed accounted for 11 to 25% of its total runoff. Forest, pasture, row-crop and RC-GFS watersheds lost 1,017, 1,241, 3,679 and 2,129 kg ha‑1 yr‑1 of sediment, respectively. In 1998, the RC-GFS watershed lost more sediment than row-crop watersheds and had less runoff and sediment loss in years with normal or below normal precipitation. Row-crop watersheds with 55% pasture reduced runoff and sediment loss by 55 and 66%, respectively, compared to row-crop watersheds. During 90% of the runoff events, more soil was lost from row-crop watersheds than pasture or forest watersheds. Results suggest that 3‑4 m grass filter strips, maintenance of 55% or more pasture/CRP land within row-crop watersheds and intact riparian buffers significantly reduce runoff and sediment losses from row-crop watersheds.Les études comparant les volumes de ruissellement et les charges sédimentaires de bassins versants avec cultures en lignes et pâturages avec et sans zones tampons et bandes riveraines sont peu nombreuses. Les effets des précipitations, de l’occupation du sol et des conditions des zones tampons sur le ruissellement et les charges sédimentaires ont été analysés de 1997 à 1999 pour huit bassins versants comportant en proportions diverses des cultures en lignes, des pâturages, des zones tampons et des bandes riveraines. Il a été montré que les volumes de ruissellement et les charges sédimentaires pour les bassins versants avec cultures en lignes étaient inversement proportionnels aux pourcentages de forêt et de pâturages présents sur ces bassins. Les moyennes mesurées sur trois ans des volumes de ruissellement des bassins versants de type forestier, avec pâturages, avec cultures en lignes et avec cultures en lignes et bandes riveraines (RC‑GFS) sont de 939, 1 560, 3 434 et 1 175 m3/ha/an respectivement. Les volumes de ruissellement mesurés pendant une année pour toutes les occupations du territoire ont été plus grands lorsque les précipitations ont été supérieures de 36 % à la normale (1998). L’événement générant le volume de ruissellement le plus important à survenir sur chaque bassin versant génère à lui seul de 11 % à 25 % du volume de ruissellement total mesuré. Les charges sédimentaires pour les bassins versants forestiers, avec pâturages, avec cultures en lignes et RC‑GFS ont été respectivement de 1 017, 1 241, 3 679, et 2 129 kg/ha/an respectivement. En 1998, les charges sédimentaires des bassins versants RC‑GFS ont été plus importantes que les bassins avec cultures en lignes alors que les volumes de ruissellement et les charges sédimentaires sur ces mêmes bassins ont été plus petits lors d’années avec des précipitations égales ou inférieures à la moyenne. Les bassins avec cultures en lignes et comportant 55 % de pâturages permettent une réduction de l’ordre de 55 % des volumes de ruissellement et de 66 % des charges sédimentaires lorsque comparés aux bassins avec cultures en lignes. Les charges sédimentaires mesurées à l’exutoire des bassins avec cultures en lignes ont été plus élevées pour 90 % des événements que celles issues des bassins avec pâturages ou forestiers. Les résultats de cette étude montrent que des bandes riveraines de 3 à 4 m, le maintien de plus de 55 % du territoire sous forme de pâturages/CRP pour des bassins avec cultures en lignes et la présence de bandes riveraines permettent de réduire de façon significative les volumes de ruissellement et les charges sédimentaires des bassins versants avec cultures en lignes