Options for Revenue Generation in Post-Conflict Environments (revision)

In the wake of violent conflict, a key element of building a durable peace is building a state with the ability to collect and manage public resources. To implement peace accords and to provide public services, the government must be able to collect revenue, allocate resources, and manage expenditure in a manner that is regarded by its citizens as effective and equitable. In this new PERI Working Paper, Michael Carnahan of the Australian National University grapples with the impact of conflict on policy, administrative systems, and overall activity, as well as the impact of pressures from the international community. The author makes five specific recommendations, including a link between revenue collections and donor aid, a reassessment of U.N. policies, changes in tax policies for foreign workers and donors' contractors, and establishing urban land taxation systems. This study is part of a series on Public Finance in Post-Conflict Environments, published jointly by PERI and New York University's Center on International Cooperation.�(Revised December 2007)Revenue mobilization; postconflict reconstruction; taxation; external assistance; tax exemptions

Options for Revenue Generation in Post-Conflict Environments

The need to build legitimate and capable states in wartorn societies is now widely recognized. The Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States, adopted by the development ministers of major donor countries in march 2005, declares that statebuilding is ‘the central objective.’ This represents a striking break from the prevailing wisdom in the closing decades of the 20th century, when the state was widely regarded as the problem. The state has been rediscovered: it is now invoked as the solution. The policy rhetoric has changed from downsizing states to building state capacity. Yet little systematic work has been done on what the international community can and should do to strengthen the capacities of post-war states to mobilize, allocate, and spend public resources. This policy paper series, jointly published by the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at new York University and the political economy research Institute (perI) at the University of massachusetts, amherst, seeks to redress this gap by presenting innovative policy proposals targeting critical issues in postwar public finance

Economic development through peacekeeping?

Politische Stabilität und Frieden sind die Grundvoraussetzungen für eine positive Wirtschaftsentwicklung. Hilfsmissionen in Krisengebieten sind weltweit an der Tagesordnung. Aber können diese Einsätze wirklich zur Unterstützung der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung beitragen

Coupled Facility-Payload Vibration Modeling Improvements

A major phase of aerospace hardware verification is vibration testing. The standard approach for such testing is to use a shaker to induce loads into the payload. In preparation for vibration testing at National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Goddard Space Flight Center an analysis is performed to assess the responses of the payload. A new method of modeling the test is presented that takes into account dynamic interactions between the facility and the payload. This dynamic interaction has affected testing in the past, but been ignored or adjusted for during testing. By modeling the combined dynamics of the facility and test article (payload) it is possible to improve the prediction of hardware responses. Many aerospace test facilities work in similar way to those at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. Lessons learned here should be applicable to other test facilities with similar setups

The assessment of client satisfaction with mental health services: A review for the practitioner

In the last several years, mental health providers have realized the importance of assessing the consumer\u27s (client or patient) satisfaction with their services (Loff, Trigg, & Cassels, 1987). This is in part due to a legislative change regarding Community Mental Health Centers. The 1975 amendments to the Community Mental Health Center (CMHC) Act require centers to assess and evaluate (among other topics) the acceptability of services (Windle & Paschall, 1981). While governmental programs have been mandated to become more accountable, even private agencies have felt some pressure to show whether clients are satisfied with the counseling provided (Royse, 1985). Today, consumer satisfaction surveys are a standard part of the practice of many mental health facilities (Lebow, 1982a). Lebow has stated the convergence of several factors including the increasingly frequent use of mental health program evaluation, the movement to a more consumer-oriented society, increased financing of treatment services by government and third-party payment, the broadened make-up of the clientele, and the ease of administration of measures of consumer satisfaction has resulted in this development

Chemical Association via Exact Thermodynamic Formulations

It can be fruitful to view two-component physical systems of attractive monomers, A and B, ``chemically'' in terms of a reaction A + B C, where C = AB is an associated pair or complex. We show how to construct free energies in the three-component or chemical picture which, under mass-action equilibration, exactly reproduce any given two-component or ``physical'' thermodynamics. Order-by-order matching conditions and closed-form chemical representations reveal the freedom available to modify the A-C, B-C, and C-C interactions and to adjust the association constant. The theory (in the simpler one-component, i.e., A = B, case) is illustrated by treating a van der Waals fluid.Comment: 15 double-spaced pages (RevTeX), including 1 eps figur

Coupled Facility/Payload Vibration Modeling Improvements

A major phase of aerospace hardware verification is vibration testing. The standard approach for such testing is to use a shaker to induce loads into the payload. In preparation for vibration testing at NASA/GSFC there is an analysis to assess the responses of the payload. A new method of modeling the test is presented that takes into account dynamic interactions between the facility and the payload. This dynamic interaction has affected testing in the past, but been ignored or adjusted for during testing. By modeling the combination of the facility and test article (payload) it is possible to improve the prediction of hardware responses. Many aerospace test facilities work in similar way to those at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Lessons learned here should be applicable to other test facilities with similar setups

Patterns of Emergency Department Use Among Long-Stay Nursing Home Residents With Differing Levels of Dementia Severity

OBJECTIVES: To describe emergency department (ED) utilization among long-stay nursing home residents with different levels of dementia severity. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING: Public Health System. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 4491 older adults (age 65 years and older) who were long-stay nursing home residents. MEASUREMENTS: Patient demographics, dementia severity, comorbidities, ED visits, ED disposition decisions, and discharge diagnoses. RESULTS: Forty-seven percent of all long-stay nursing home residents experienced at least 1 transfer to the ED over the course of a year. At their first ED transfer, 36.4% of the participants were admitted to the hospital, whereas 63.1% of those who visited the ED were not. The median time to first ED visit for the participants with advanced stage dementia was 258 days, whereas it was 250 days for the participants with early to moderate stage dementia and 202 days for the participants with no dementia (P = .0034). Multivariate proportional hazard modeling showed that age, race, number of comorbidities, number of hospitalizations in the year prior, and do not resuscitate status all significantly influenced participants' time to first ED visit (P < .05 for all). After accounting for these effects, dementia severity (P = .66), years in nursing home before qualification (P = .46), and gender (P = .36) lost their significance. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms high rates of transfer of long-stay nursing home residents, with nearly one-half of the participants experiencing at least 1 ED visit over the course of a year. Although dementia severity is not a predictor of time to ED use in our analyses, other factors that influence ED use are readily identifiable. Nursing home providers should be aware of these factors when developing strategies that meet patient care goals and avoid transfer from the nursing home to the ED

Enhancing the resolution of 1H and 13C solid-state NMR spectra by reduction of anisotropic bulk magnetic susceptibility broadening

We demonstrate that natural isotopic abundance 2D heteronuclear correlation (HETCOR) solid-state NMR spectra can be used to significantly reduce or eliminate the broadening of 1H and 13C solid-state NMR spectra of organic solids due to anisotropic bulk magnetic susceptibility (ABMS). ABMS often manifests in solids with aromatic groups, such as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), and inhomogeneously broadens the NMR peaks of all nuclei in the sample. Inhomogeneous peaks with full widths at half maximum (FWHM) of ∼1 ppm typically result from ABMS broadening and the low spectral resolution impedes the analysis of solid-state NMR spectra. ABMS broadening of solid-state NMR spectra has previously been eliminated using 2D multiple-quantum correlation experiments, or by performing NMR experiments on diluted materials or single crystals. However, these experiments are often infeasible due to their poor sensitivity and/or provide limited gains in resolution. 2D 1H–13C HETCOR experiments have previously been applied to reduce susceptibility broadening in paramagnetic solids and we show that this strategy can significantly reduce ABMS broadening in diamagnetic organic solids. Comparisons of 1D solid-state NMR spectra and 1H and 13C solid-state NMR spectra obtained from 2D 1H–13C HETCOR NMR spectra show that the HETCOR spectrum directly increases resolution by a factor of 1.5 to 8. The direct gain in resolution is determined by the ratio of the inhomogeneous 13C/1H linewidth to the homogeneous 1H linewidth, with the former depending on the magnitude of the ABMS broadening and the strength of the applied field and the latter on the efficiency of homonuclear decoupling. The direct gains in resolution obtained using the 2D HETCOR experiments are better than that obtained by dilution. For solids with long proton longitudinal relaxation times, dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) was applied to enhance sensitivity and enable the acquisition of 2D 1H–13C HETCOR NMR spectra. 2D 1H–13C HETCOR experiments were applied to resolve and partially assign the NMR signals of the form I and form II polymorphs of aspirin in a sample containing both forms. These findings have important implications for ultra-high field NMR experiments, optimization of decoupling schemes and assessment of the fundamental limits on the resolution of solid-state NMR spectra

Atypical Chryseobacterium meningosepticum and meningitis and sepsis in newborns and the immunocompromised, Taiwan.

From 1996 to 1999, 17 culture-documented systemic infections due to novel, atypical strains of Chryseobacterium meningosepticum occurred in two newborns and 15 immunocompromised patients in a medical center in Taiwan. All clinical isolates, which were initially misidentified as Aeromonas salmonicida by an automated bacterial identification system, were resistant to a number of antimicrobial agents. The isolates were characterized as atypical strains of C. meningosepticum by complete biochemical investigation, 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, cellular fatty acid analysis, and random amplified polymorphic DNA fingerprinting (RAPD). This is the first report of a cluster of atypically variant strains of C. meningosepticum, which may be an emerging pathogen in newborns and the immunocompromised