Ownership and financing of infrastructure : historical perspective

The authors summarize the rich and varied experiences of private and public provision of urban services in France, Great Britain, and the United States over the past 100 years. Their main focus is on experiences in the United States and on shifts back and forth between the public and private sectors. A few of their observations: (i) The values of politically important actors as well as the working of government, political, and legal institutions have shaped decisions about infrastructure development, the sorts of public goods demanded, and the roles played by private firms. (ii) The range of choices that has historically been made with respect to the ownership, financing, and operation of different infrastructures has been far too varied to be encompassed by simple distinctions between"public"and"private."(iii) Throughout the world, many infrastructures owned and operated by governments have been built by private firms. (iv) In the United States, private firms and property-owners associations of various sorts have owned outright both toll roads and residential streets. Private firms have also collected solid wastes and provided urban transport under a range of franchise, contracting, and regulatory arrangements. The situation with mass transit has been similar in Great Britain. Although water works facilities in France are predominantly government-owned, private firms operate and manage most systems under an array of contracting and leasing arrangements. (v) Even when facilities have been owned by private firms, direct competition has been of limited importance in the provision of many kinds of infrastructure. But market discipline can arise from other sources. (vi) Privatization can get government bureaucracies out of the business of performing entrepreneurial activities for which they may be poorly suited. When market forces are weak, however, and important public interests are at stake, strengthening government institutions may be a prerequisite for successful privatization. (vii) In the electric utility industry, private firms played a far greater role in U.S. electric utilities than in Great Britain, in part because of different views about appropriate roles for government in providing essential services. For similar reasons, the state played a much larger role in furnishing telecommunications services in France than in the United States. (viii) Beliefs about the"publicness"of different goods and services have helped shape the character of regulatory franchise, and contracting arrangements. When a good is seen as mainly private, it is easier for private service providers to be compensated mainly by user fees and for most decisions about price, output, and quality, no matter what the role played by private firms in actually providing services. (ix) Goods defined as"public"have often been provided free to users, even though it would have been easy to exclude nonpayers. Examples in the United States include interstate highway systems, public parks, public libraries, and police and fire protection. Free services have been provided because it is believed that in these domains market relationships should not apply - and that denying nonpayers the public services would be a denial of rights. (x) In Great Britain and the United States, the contracting out of public services has been both supported and opposed because of its potential to break the power of public sector unions and to cut workers'pay. In the United States, privatization has also come under attack on the grounds that opportunities for minority employment may be reduced.Regional Governance,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Decentralization,Public Sector Management and Reform,Urban Governance and Management,Public Sector Management and Reform,Urban Governance and Management,Regional Governance,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Public Sector Economics&Finance

Project Management Lesson Learned Web Application

A Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE in Project ManagementThis project seeks to improve how project managers capture, access, utilize, and benefit from project lessons learned to reduce risks and accelerate higher quality project outcomes. Individuals and organizations might benefit from consolidating project lessons learned into an easily accessible format. However, few organizations researched for this project have implemented such tools. Research conducted included surveys and interviews of project personnel to understand content, structure, and access and usability needs. The project develops a structured web-based application that facilities capturing lessons learned information so that it can be easily accessed and used for current and future projects. The implementation of the web application ‘Project Management Lesson Learned Web Application’ (PMLLWA) was developed due to improve accessibility to lessons learned from previous and ongoing projects due to unformatted, inconsistent, and outdated templates. This application provides secure and central access from any browser and any device with access to the internet. It provides a flexible tool, capable of interacting with various sources to access project lessons learned. These tools will benefit on generating project lesson learned narrative, consistent insertion of lesson learned with brief explanation per section and will serve as an archive of uploading files related to the project lesson learned

The prevalence and distribution of the amyloidogenic transthyretin (TTR) V122I allele in Africa

Transthyretin (TTR) pV142I (rs76992529-A) is one of the 113 variants in the human TTR gene associated with systemic amyloidosis. It results from a G to A transition at a CG dinucleotide in the codon for amino acid 122 of the mature protein (TTR V122I). The allele frequency is 0.0173 in African Americans

High-fidelity single-shot readout for a spin qubit via an enhanced latching mechanism

The readout of semiconductor spin qubits based on spin blockade is fast but suffers from a small charge signal. Previous work suggested large benefits from additional charge mapping processes, however uncertainties remain about the underlying mechanisms and achievable fidelity. In this work, we study the single-shot fidelity and limiting mechanisms for two variations of an enhanced latching readout. We achieve average single-shot readout fidelities > 99.3% and > 99.86% for the conventional and enhanced readout respectively, the latter being the highest to date for spin blockade. The signal amplitude is enhanced to a full one-electron signal while preserving the readout speed. Furthermore, layout constraints are relaxed because the charge sensor signal is no longer dependent on being aligned with the conventional (2, 0) - (1, 1) charge dipole. Silicon donor-quantum-dot qubits are used for this study, for which the dipole insensitivity substantially relaxes donor placement requirements. One of the readout variations also benefits from a parametric lifetime enhancement by replacing the spin-relaxation process with a charge-metastable one. This provides opportunities to further increase the fidelity. The relaxation mechanisms in the different regimes are investigated. This work demonstrates a readout that is fast, has one-electron signal and results in higher fidelity. It further predicts that going beyond 99.9% fidelity in a few microseconds of measurement time is within reach.Comment: Supplementary information is included with the pape

Adenosine receptors (version 2019.4) in the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to Pharmacology Database

Adenosine receptors (nomenclature as agreed by the NC-IUPHAR Subcommittee on Adenosine Receptors [103]) are activated by the endogenous ligand adenosine (potentially inosine also at A3 receptors). Crystal structures for the antagonist-bound [146, 305, 213, 55], agonist-bound [362, 196, 198] and G protein-bound A2A adenosine receptors [43] have been described. The structures of an antagonist-bound A1 receptor [123] and an adenosine-bound A1 receptor-Gi complex [80] have been resolved by cryo-electronmicroscopy. Another structure of an antagonist-bound A1 receptor obtained with X-ray crystallography has also been reported [51]

Adenosine receptors in GtoPdb v.2021.2

Adenosine receptors (nomenclature as agreed by the NC-IUPHAR Subcommittee on Adenosine Receptors [110]) are activated by the endogenous ligand adenosine (potentially inosine also at A3 receptors). Crystal structures for the antagonist-bound [153, 313, 221, 61], agonist-bound [375, 203, 204] and G protein-bound A2A adenosine receptors [49] have been described. The structures of an antagonist-bound A1 receptor [128] and an adenosine-bound A1 receptor-Gi complex [86] have been resolved by cryo-electronmicroscopy. Another structure of an antagonist-bound A1 receptor obtained with X-ray crystallography has also been reported [57]. caffeine is a nonselective antagonist for adenosine receptors, while istradefylline, a selective A2A receptor antagonist, is on the market for the treatment of Parkinson's disease