Early evaluation of a new nutrition and education programme in Colombia

From introduction: In recent years, international financial institutions, policy-makers and economists have paid considerable attention to micro development policies based on cash transfers targeted to poor families and released only if the potential beneficiaries comply with specific conditions. Such conditional cash transfers have been particularly popular in education and nutrition policies – that is, in policies whose aim is to foster the accumulation of human capital among young children. In the case of the nutrition interventions, the conditions are often that the mother of the children, who receives the transfers, enrols them to development and growth check-ups and/or attends hygiene, vaccination and contraception courses. Much of the attention on conditional transfer programmes originated from the perceived success of a large programme of this nature started in rural Mexico in 1998 and evaluated scientifically with semi-experimental methods. Since the evidence on PROGRESA, as the Mexican programme was known, has received much attention, several international organisations have been promoting similar interventions in many developing countries and in particular in Latin America. It should be stressed that while PROGRESA has been widely branded as a success and has surely improved the nutritional and development outcomes of very young children and enrolment for secondary school, the reasons behind this success are not entirely obvious. In particular, it is not completely clear whether the conditionalities imposed by the programme played a role in determining the outcomes and what that role was

Baseline report on the evaluation of Familias en Acción

This report describes the survey that was carried out in 122 communities in rural Colombia by the consortium formed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Econometria and SEI as the baseline for the impact evaluation of Familias en Acción, a programme to foster the accumulation of human capital in rural Colombia, run by the Colombian government. In this report, we will not describe in detail the programme or the methodology of the proposed evaluation, as this was done in IFS-Econometria-SEI (2003a). The main aim of the document is to discuss the first, baseline survey that was collected for this evaluation. While the baseline survey cannot, by definition, be used to perform impact evaluation, towards the end of the report we exploit the slightly peculiar way in which the programme was started and have a first very preliminary glance at some of the impacts that the programme might have. The methodological caveats on interpreting these results should be taken very seriously. This report does not contain an extensive ‘fieldwork’ report. This is included in SEI (2003). Analogously, we do not discuss extensively the operation of the programme and the evidence that emerged on related issues and on targeting. These issues are covered in IFS-Econometria- SEI (2003b, 2003c). We will be referring to some of the issues raised in those reports, however. This report is divided into five chapters. In Chapter 1, we briefly summarise the main features of the programme and its proposed evaluation. A more detailed description of both of these aspects is contained in IFS-Econometria-SEI (2003a). Here, however, we give some details on the expansion of the programme and on the features of this expansion that allow a first and preliminary analysis of the impact of the programme. In Chapter 2, we describe the statistical methodology that will be used in the report. This includes the methodology for the data description that constitutes the largest part of the report and for the preliminary impact evaluation. Chapter 3 describes the baseline survey. This chapter is divided into several sections, each referring to a particular module. In each section, we first describe the ‘treatment’ population – that is, the households eligible for the programme that were living in villages targeted by the programme. We then move on to the population living in ‘control’ villages – that is, in villages that were not targeted by the programme and yet are, nonetheless, reasonably similar to the treatment villages. Chapter 4 presents the preliminary impact evaluation

Intestinal Microbial Ecology of Broilers Vaccinated and Challenged With Mixed Eimeria Species, and Supplemented with Essential Oil Blends

Intestinal microbiota is an important component in the development of defense mechanisms in the gut mucosa. This project determined the dynamics of intestinal microbial communities (MC) of broilers vaccinated at first day of age with live oocysts of Eimeria species and fed diets supplemented with 2 specific essential oil (EO) blends, Crina Poultry (CP) and Crina Alternate (CA). Five treatments were analyzed: 1) unmedicated-uninfected (UU) control; 2) unmedicated-infected (UI) control; 3) vaccinated with Advent cocci-vaccine and without feed additive (COV) supplements; 4) vaccinated with Advent and supplemented with CP; and 5) vaccinated with Advent and supplemented with CA. The EO blends were added at 100 ppm to the same basal diets. Chicks were gavage-infected at 19 d of age with Eimeria acervulina, Eimeria maxima, and Eimeria tenella. Duodenal, ileal, and cecal samples were taken from 12 birds per treatment just before the infection and 7 d after the challenge, pooled in 6 samples, and frozen. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis was used to examine PCR-amplified fragments of the bacterial 16S ribosomal DNA variable region. Results are presented as percentages of similarity coefficients (SC). Dendrograms of amplicon patterns indicated MC differences due to intestinal location, feed additives, and cocci infection. The EO blends CP and CA did affect MC in all gut sections. The cocci-infection caused drastic MC population shifts in duodenal, ileal, and cecal sections (36.7, 55.4, and 36.2% SC, respectively). The CP-supplemented birds had higher SC between pre- and postchallenge MC in duodenal and ileal (73.3, 81.8%) than COV (66.4, 66.5%). However, COV broilers had the smallest changes in cecal MC after infection (79.5% SC). We concluded that cocci-vaccination causes small changes in intestinal MC, but challenge causes drastic shifts. The EO blend supplementation modulates MC in cocci-vaccinated broilers, avoiding drastic shifts after a mixed coccidia infection. Correlations between MC dynamics and host responses are discussed

Transverse parton momenta in single inclusive hadron production in e+e−{e^ + }{e^ - } annihilation processes

We study the transverse momentum distributions of single inclusive hadron production in ${e^ + }{e^ - }$ annihilation processes. Although the only available experimental data are scarce and quite old, we find that the fundamental features of transverse momentum dependent (TMD) evolution, historically addressed in Drell-Yan processes and, more recently, in Semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering processes, are visible in ${e^ + }{e^ - }$ annihilations as well. Interesting effects related to its non-perturbative regime can be observed. We test two different parameterizations for the $p_\perp$ dependence of the cross section: the usual Gaussian distribution and a power-law model. We find the latter to be more appropriate in describing this particular set of experimental data, over a relatively large range of $p_\perp$ values. We use this model to map some of the features of the data within the framework of TMD evolution, and discuss the caveats of this and other possible interpretations, related to the one-dimensional nature of the available experimental data

Child health in rural Colombia: determinants and policy interventions

In this paper we study the determinants of child anthropometrics on a sample of poor Colombian children living in small municipalities. We focus on the influence of household consumption, and public infrastructure. We take into account the endogeneity of household consumption using two different sets of instruments: household assets and municipality average wage. We find that household consumption is an important determinant of child health. The importance of the effect is confirmed by the two different sets of instruments. We find that using ordinary least squares would lead to conclude that the importance of household consumption is much smaller than the instrumental variable estimates suggest. The presence of a public hospital in the municipality positively influences child health. The extent of the piped water network positively influences the health of children if their parents have at least some education. The number of hours of growth and development check-ups is also an important determinant of child health. We find that some of these results only show up once squared and interaction terms have been included in the regression. Overall, our estimates suggest that both public and private investments are important to improve child health in poor environments

A phenomenological analysis of azimuthal asymmetries in unpolarized semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering

We present a phenomenological analysis of the cos-phi and cos-2phi asymmetries in unpolarized semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering, based on the recent multidimensional data released by the COMPASS and HERMES Collaborations. In the TMD framework, valid at relatively low transverse momenta, these asymmetries arise from intrinsic transverse momentum and transverse spin effects, and from their correlations. The role of the Cahn and Boer-Mulders effects in both azimuthal moments is explored up to order 1/Q. As the kinematics of the present experiments is dominated by the low-Q^2 region, higher-twist contributions turn out to be important, affecting the results of our fits.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, one paragraph added at the end of Section IV, one reference added. PRD versio

A study on the interplay between perturbative QCD and CSS/TMD formalism in SIDIS processes

We study the Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering (SIDIS) cross section as a function of the transverse momentum, $q_T$. In order to describe it over a wide region of $q_T$, soft gluon resummation has to be performed. Here we will use the original Collins-Soper-Sterman (CSS) formalism; however, the same procedure would hold within the improved Transverse Momentum Dependent (TMD) framework. We study the matching between the region where fixed order perturbative QCD can successfully be applied and the region where soft gluon resummation is necessary. We find that the commonly used prescription of matching through the so-called Y-factor cannot be applied in the SIDIS kinematical configurations we examine. In particular, the non-perturbative component of the resummed cross section turns out to play a crucial role and should not be overlooked even at relatively high energies. Moreover, the perturbative expansion of the resummed cross section in the matching region is not as reliable as it is usually believed and its treatment requires special attention.Comment: Two references and an appendix added, 22 pages, 11 figure

Effects of Feed Additives and Mixed Eimeria Species Infection on Intestinal Microbial Ecology of Broilers

Evaluation of digestive microbial ecology is necessary to understand effects of growth-promoting feed. In the current study, the dynamics of intestinal microbial communities (MC) were examined in broilers fed diets supplemented with a combination of antibiotic (bacitracin methylene disalicylate) and ionophore (Coban 60), and diets containing 1 of 2 essential oil (EO) blends, Crina Poultry (CP) and Crina Alternate (CA). Five treatments were analyzed: 1) unmedicated uninfected control; 2) unmedicated infected control; 3) feed additives monensin (bacitracin methylene disalicylate) + monensin (Coban 60; AI); 4) EO blend CP; and 5) EO blend CA. Additives were mixed into a basal feed mixture, and EO were adjusted to 100 ppm. Chicks were infected by oral gavage at 19 d of age with Eimeria acervulina, Eimeria maxima, and Eimeria tenella. Duodenal, ileal, and cecal samples were taken from 12 birds per treatment just before and 7 d after challenge; 2 samples each were pooled to give a final number of 6 samples total; and all pooled samples were frozen until used for DNA extraction. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis was used to examine PCR-amplified fragments of the bacterial 16S ribosomal DNA variable region. Results are presented as percentages of similarity coefficients (SC). Dendrograms of PCR amplicon or band patterns indicated MC differences due to intestinal location, feed additives, and cocci challenge. Essential oil blends CP and CA affected MC in all gut sections. Each EO had different effects over MC, and they differed in most instances from the AI group. The cocci challenge caused drastic MC population shifts in duodenal, ileal, and cecal sections (36.7, 55.4, and 36.2% SC, respectively). Diets supplemented with CP supported higher SC between pre- and postchallenge MC (89.9, 83.3, and 76.4%) than AI (81.8., 57.4, and 60.0%). We concluded that mixed coccidia challenge caused drastic shifts in MC. These EO blends modulated MC better than AI, avoiding drastic shifts after a mixed challenge