OPTIMAL ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT OF GROUNDWATER QUANTITY AND QUALITY: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

A dynamic model is developed that jointly optimizes over groundwater quality and quantity for extractive municipal and non-extractive agricultural users. The model is applied to an aquifer in southern Ontario to analyze several policy scenarios, demonstrating that interactions between externalities can partially offset one another.Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Long term implications of low fertility in Kerala

In recent years, Kerala has made remarkable progress in its demographic transition. The State has achieved below replacement level of fertility two decades ahead of the all-India target year of 2011 and India is likely to achieve the replacement level only by 2021. The TFR declined from a high level of 5.6 in 1951-61 to about 1.7 in 1993, a level which is very much below the replacement level of 2.05. The State's IMR has touched a low level of 13 in 1993, a level comparable to that of some of the developed countries of the world. The population growth rate has declined to about 1 per cent per annum in 1995 from a high level of 2.3 per cent per year during 1961-71. Thus Kerala's demographic trends in the first half of the 21st century will be dramatically different from that of the second half of the 20th century. Total population of the State is expected to increase by 170 percent in the second half of the present century (from 11,723,000 in 1951 to 31,553,000 in 2001), the growth (if any) in the next half a century will be very negligible. The crude death rate declined from about 20 to about 6 in the last half a century, but it is likely to increase from 6 to 13 in the next century. The crude birth rate decreased from 40 to about 16 in the last half a century, but it is likely to remain more or less stable in the next half a century. While Kerala experienced varying degrees of net out-migration and net emigration in the last half a century, migration trend in the next half a century is somewhat uncertain. It will depend more on socio-economic developments than on demographic trends. The socioeconomic implications of the reversal of the demographic trends will be far reaching: (a) To begin with, the pressure on schools and colleges will be a thing of the past, giving ample opportunities for the educational system to concentrate on the quality of education rather than on quantity. (b) This is also true of hospitals and health personnel catering to the health needs of the children. It will be easier to bring about the needed improvement in the quality of their services. (c) In the transitional period, parity between the number of girls and boys in their respective marriage ages will be maintained. But this is a temporary respite. (d) Other things being equal on the economic front, unemployment among the young working age population will be greatly reduced. The educated young workers might be able to pick and choose the job they want. But this is not the case with older workers. The number of older working population would almost double in a short period of 20 years between 2001 and 2021 (e) In the last half a century the major socioeconomic problems were related to the schooling, maintenance of health and nutrition and finding employment for the youngsters. In the next half a century, the major socio-economic problems would be finding gainful employment for the older working age population, maintenance of the health and nutrition of the elderly, and providing them with means of subsistence through social security and pension, etc.Kerala, fertility, mortality, migration, projections, aging, labour force, social security, pension, marriage

A Minimal Architecture for General Cognition

A minimalistic cognitive architecture called MANIC is presented. The MANIC architecture requires only three function approximating models, and one state machine. Even with so few major components, it is theoretically sufficient to achieve functional equivalence with all other cognitive architectures, and can be practically trained. Instead of seeking to transfer architectural inspiration from biology into artificial intelligence, MANIC seeks to minimize novelty and follow the most well-established constructs that have evolved within various sub-fields of data science. From this perspective, MANIC offers an alternate approach to a long-standing objective of artificial intelligence. This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the MANIC architecture.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, conference, Proceedings of the 2015 International Joint Conference on Neural Network

Early mortality (pre and post antiretroviral treatment) amongst children with HIV/AIDS enrolled in two programs in Cambodia

Mexico AIDS Conference 200

Building leadership capacity and future leaders in operational research in low-income countries: why and how?

Very limited operational research (OR) emerges from programme settings in low-income countries where the greatest burden of disease lies. The price paid for this void includes a lack of understanding of how health systems are actually functioning, not knowing what works and what does not, and an inability to propose adapted and innovative solutions to programme problems. We use the National Tuberculosis Control Programme as an example to advocate for strong programme-level leadership to steer OR and build viable relationships between programme managers, researchers and policy makers. We highlight the need to create a stimulating environment for conducting OR and identify some of the main practical challenges and enabling factors at programme level. We focus on the important role of an OR focal point within programmes and practical approaches to training that can deliver timely and quantifiable outputs. Finally, we emphasise the need to measure successful OR leadership development at programme level and we propose parameters by which this can be assessed. This paper 1) provides reasons why programmes should take the lead in coordinating and directing OR, 2) identifies the practical challenges and enabling factors for implementing, managing and sustaining OR and 3) proposes parameters for measuring successful leadership capacity development in OR