After the SKA - Radio Astronomy in 2049

The concept of a Square Kilometre Array was developed to ensure that progress in Radio Astronomy in the early 21st Century continued at the same impressive pace as was achieved during the first 50 years. The SKA telescope is designed to pave that road to greater and greater sensitivity. So what technical challenges does the project face and what key innovations will drive the success of the SKA? What will the next Radio Astronomy mega-science project look like? In this article the author discusses the likely avenues of progress in the coming decades and comments on the status of radio astronomy in 2049 - the author's 70th (and presumably her retirement) year.Comment: Conference Proceedings PoS(RTS2012), 8 pages, 1 figur

MACROECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT AND THE BALANCE OF BARGAINING POWER IN RURAL WEST AFRICAN HOUSEHOLDS

The example of cotton-producing households in Burkina Faso is used to investigate (1) how price-shifting macroeconomic adjustment policies affect the balance of bargaining power between spouses in West African households and (2) how the balance of power itself mediates the impact of policies on households' production, income, and welfare.Consumer/Household Economics, Crop Production/Industries,

Implementing a mentor support system for general practice nurse mentors

This article discusses the need for nurse mentors to receive adequate support to ensure that their experience, and the students, is a positive one. The authors explore how the development of the advanced training practice (ATP) scheme in general practice (GP) has helped general practice nurse mentors to meet the demand for more student placements and provide the best learning experience possible for students. The article features a framework that can be used in other ATP schemes to support mentors in GP ‘hub and spoke’ practices

Can FAO's measure of chronic undernourishment be strengthened?

In its Sixth World Food Survey released at the 1996 World Food Summit, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported that 841 million people in developing countries are chronically undernourished. This number and its country- and regional-level disaggregations have proved tremendously useful to countless aid agencies and researchers. In the context of a recent wave of new nationally-representative household food consumption and expenditure data, this paper examines the estimation methodology underlying this food insecurity indicator, which relies on national aggregate measures of food availability and distribution. The paper finds that the measure is methodologically biased toward national food availability and does not fully account for the effects of poverty—the most widespread cause of food insecurity in developing countries. The implications of this bias for use of the indicator in cross-country comparisons of food insecurity and for tracking changes in it over time are drawn out. The paper concludes by arguing that the time has come to review the potential for employing the new household survey data for strengthening the empirical foundations of the FAO's measure of chronic undernourishment.Food security Measurement Methodology. ,Food consumption Statistics. ,

Is food insecurity more severe in South Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa?: A comparative analysis using household expenditure survey data

"This paper uses data from national household expenditure surveys to explore whether food insecurity is more severe in South Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. It employs two indicators of the diet quantity dimension of food insecurity, or the inability to access sufficient food: the prevalence of food energy deficiency and the prevalence of severe food energy deficiency. It also employs two indicators of the diet quality dimension, indicating lack of access to nutritious food: the prevalence of low diet diversity and the percent of energy from staple foods. It finds the regions' food energy deficiency prevalences to be quite close (51 percent in South Asia, 57 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa). However, the prevalence of severe food energy deficiency, which is more life threatening, is higher in Sub-Saharan Africa (51 percent versus 35 percent in South Asia). From a diet quality standpoint, the regions appear to suffer from a comparable and high reliance on staple foods in the diet to the neglect of foods rich in protein and micronutrients, but that Sub-Saharan Africa may be doing worse, as reflected in less diverse diets. The results confirm that both regions suffer from deep food insecurity problems but point to Sub-Saharan Africa as the region with the more severe problem, particularly when it comes to the diet quantity dimension of food insecurity. In deciding which region should be given greater emphasis in the international allocation of scarce development resources, the fact that the numbers of people affected by food insecurity are higher in South Asia should be taken into consideration." from Authors' Abstractfood security, Food energy deficiency, Diet quality,

Measuring food security using household expenditure surveys:

Food is one of the most basic needs for human survival. Access to it is a basic human right. Moreover, the pursuit of the Millennium Development Goal to cut hunger requires a sound understanding of the related food security issues. For these reasons, accurate measurement of the food security status of populations—or their ability to gain access to sufficient high-quality food to enable them to live an active, healthy life—is imperative to all international development efforts. It is necessary for effectively targeting food-insecure populations, researching and planning appropriate interventions, and monitoring progress. As past efforts have shown, accurately estimating the amount of food people eat is costly in terms of time and money, and such measurements have thus been carried out mostly in small populations. Where measurement has been extended to large populations, such as entire countries, it has been necessary to rely on less accurate, indirect techniques based on the availability of food at the national level. This technical guide presents a new avenue for measuring food security, for both small and large populations, based on the data collected as part of household expenditure surveys on the quantities of food acquired by households. It shows how these data can be used to measure a variety of food security indicators, including the prevalence of food energy deficiency and indicators of dietary quality and economic vulnerability to food insecurity. In keeping with the approach of IFPRI's Food Security in Practice series for practitioners, the manual guides readers step by step through the process of assessing the food security status of a population. It begins by offering guidance on choosing an appropriate strategy for calculating quantities of foods acquired by households, given time constraints, financial constraints, and the nature of the population's diet. The guide then leads the practitioner through the steps of collecting the data, processing and cleaning the data, and calculating the indicators. It concludes by illustrating how to conduct some basic food security analyses. I hope that this guide will assist practitioners in increasing the accuracy of the measurement of food insecurity for a greater number of populations, including those at the country level. Greater accuracy at the country level will provide the necessary foundations for overcoming food insecurity globallyFood supply, food consumption, Diet, Household surveys,

Panel discussion: U.S. EPA using modeling and ecosystem services to enhance coastal decision making

This panel will discuss the research being conducted, and the models being used in three current coastal EPA studies being conducted on ecosystem services in Tampa Bay, the Chesapeake Bay and the Coastal Carolinas. These studies are intended to provide a broader and more comprehensive approach to policy and decision-making affecting coastal ecosystems as well as provide an account of valued services that have heretofore been largely unrecognized. Interim research products, including updated and integrated spatial data, models and model frameworks, and interactive decision support systems will be demonstrated to engage potential users and to elicit feedback. It is anticipated that the near-term impact of the projects will be to increase the awareness by coastal communities and coastal managers of the implications of their actions and to foster partnerships for ecosystem services research and applications. (PDF contains 4 pages

Explaining child malnutrition in developing countries

"One in three pre school children in the developing world is undernourished. As a consequence, their human rights are violated. In addition, they are more likely to have impaired immune systems, poorer cognitive development, lower productivity as adults, and greater susceptibility to diet-related chronic diseases such as hypertension and coronary heart disease later in life. Undernourished female preschoolers are likely to grow into undernourished young women who are more likely to give birth to babies who are undernourished even before they are born, thus perpetuating the inter-generational transmission of deprivation. Reducing these unacceptably high numbers remains a tremendous challenge to public policy. As a guide to the direction of future efforts, this research report examines the success of the efforts of the past 25 years to reduce preschooler undernutrition. The report uses an econometric model to identify the factors associated with the reduction in undernutrition. The formulation of the econometric model is guided by the widely accepted food-care-health conceptual model of child growth. The contributions of both underlying and basic determinants to reductions in undernutrition are assessed using the model. The potential of these factors to further reduce undernutrition is evaluated in a region-by-region priority-setting exercise. In addition, projections of child nutrition are made under various scenarios to the year 2020. What will it take to dramatically reduce undernutrition in the next 20 years? The report attempts some broad answers to these questions..." (Forward by Per Pinstrup-Andersen)Gender ,Malnutrition in children Developing countries Prevention ,Nutrition ,

Overcoming child malnutrition in developing countries

In 1995, 167 million children under five years old—almost one-third of developing-country children—were malnourished. Malnutrition causes a great deal of human suffering, and it is a violation of a child's human rights. It is associated with more than half of all deaths of children worldwide. People who survive a malnourished childhood are less physically and intellectually productive and suffer from more chronic illness and disability. The costs to society are enormous. Eradicating malnutrition remains a tremendous public policy challenge. Which types of interventions will have the greatest impact in reducing child malnutrition? The study on which this brief is based uses national data for 63 countries over 1970–96 to explore this question. Smith and Hadded examine the determinants of child nutritional status and discuss reductions in child malnutrition during 1970–95. they forecast the status of child malnutrition to the year 2020 and sugest priorities for the future.Malnutrition in children Developing countries History. ,Malnutrition in children Developing countries Forecasting. ,

Supply response of West African agricultural households

This paper explores the implications of preference heterogeneity between wives and husbands in nonresource-pooling rural West African households for the effect of crop price changes on agricultural production, i.e., their supply response. A "semi-cooperative" game-theoretic model of household decisionmaking, in which household members make unilateral time and income allocation decisions and negotiate over who controls these resources, is proposed. The model is used to show that Pareto efficiency in both production and consumption do not hold. It is then employed to simulate the supply response to cotton price increases accompanying agricultural sector liberalization in Burkina Faso in the early 1980s. The simulated semi-cooperative model predicts the cotton supply response of (monogamous) Burkinabé households to be 25 percent below that which would ensue in households facing the same production constraints yet whose members have identical preferences. The analysis indicates that in nonresource-pooling agricultural households, preference heterogeneity can be expected to mute supply response and may do so in a quantitatively significant manner. It illustrates how an intrahousehold approach that allows for such heterogeneity and for disaggregation of resource control by gender contributes to a better understanding of price effects.Gender ,Resource management. ,Households Decision making. ,Household resource allocation ,