Input Use and Incentives in the Caribbean Shrimp Fishery: The Case of the Trinidad and Tobago Fleet

This paper examines the economic factors that influence output in the Trinidad and Tobago shrimp fishery using a Generalized Leontief production function. Factors such as output prices and the use of inputs in the fishery are assessed. The artisanal and industrial fleets operate in a largely open-access fishery, which is seasonal. While shrimp is the main targeted species, various fish species are also targeted using gear modifications. It was found that for the artisanal shrimp trawl fleet in Trinidad and Tobago, effort, in terms of trip days, was estimated to have a significant effect on both shrimp and bycatch landings at almost similar levels. The relative price of the two species was not found to be significant, and no annual trends in the production of either was observed. However, the high season for shrimp landings, January to June, was found to have significant inverse effects on shrimp and bycatch landings.Generalized Leontief production function, effort, shrimp, Trinidad and Tobago., Community/Rural/Urban Development, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, International Development, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Q21, Q22, C33.,

Detroit to Flint and Back Again: Solidarity Forever

For several years the authors have been working in Detroit with grassroots coalitions resisting Emergency Management. In this essay, we focus on how community groups in Detroit and Flint advanced common struggles for clean, safe, affordable water as a human right, particularly during the period of 2014 to 2016. We explore how, through a series of direct interventions – including public meetings and international gatherings, independent journalism and social media, community-based research projects, and citizen-led policy initiatives – these groups contributed to challenging neoliberal governance, to undermining the legitimacy of state officials and their policies, and to shifting public consciousness around the human right to water

Climate change and health in Earth's future

Threats to health from climate change are increasingly recognized, yet little research into the effects upon health systems is published. However, additional demands on health systems are increasingly documented. Pathways include direct weather impacts, such as amplified heat stress, and altered ecological relationships, including alterations to the distribution and activity of pathogens and vectors. The greatest driver of demand on future health systems from climate change may be the alterations to socioeconomic systems; however, these “tertiary effects” have received less attention in the health literature. Increasing demands on health systems from climate change will impede health system capacity. Changing weather patterns and sea-level rise will reduce food production in many developing countries, thus fostering undernutrition and concomitant disease susceptibility. Associated poverty will impede people’s ability to access and support health systems. Climate change will increase migration, potentially exposing migrants to endemic diseases for which they have limited resistance, transporting diseases and fostering conditions conducive to disease transmission. Specific predictions of timing and locations of migration remain elusive, hampering planning and misaligning needs and infrastructure. Food shortages, migration, falling economic activity, and failing government legitimacy following climate change are also “risk multipliers” for conflict. Injuries to combatants, undernutrition, and increased infectious disease will result. Modern conflict often sees health personnel and infrastructure deliberately targeted and disease surveillance and eradication programs obstructed. Climate change will substantially impede economic growth, reducing health system funding and limiting health system adaptation. Modern medical care may be snatched away from millions who recently obtained it

PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN THE CARIBBEAN: A MEASURE OF KEY COMPONENTS

Productivity growth is decomposed into two components: technical change and efficiency change. This assesses their relative importance to the international competitiveness of the agricultural sectors of selected Caribbean countries. A nonparametric programming method is employed to compute Malmquist multifactor productivity indexes, which contrasts the innovation of races of these countries. Keywords: Multifactor productivity, Malmquist indexes, Caribbean agriculture, Relative efficiency, Technical efficiencyMultifactor productivity, Malmquist indexes, Caribbean agriculture, Relative efficiency, Technical efficiency, Productivity Analysis, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Transition into adult healthcare services in Scotland –findings from a study concerning service users at the Scottish Spina Bifida Association

Background and Aims: Literature on interventions that enable young people with spina bifida and/or hydrocephalus to have smooth transition, into adult healthcare services, stress the need for the process to start early and to include all family members. The study reported here was set to quantify and articulate the experiences of service users who are or due to be going through the transition process in Scotland today. Methods and Results: Focus group sessions, in the North of Scotland and in the ‘Central Belt’, captured rich qualitative data. A survey, sent to eligible participants on the Spina Bifida National database, offered complimentary data source. Despite the fact that the number of returned questionnaires was low (n = 20), data analysis identified a number of core recurring themes. These include issues concerning Communications, Respect, Choice and Control. Findings suggest that there is a significant chasm between the political rhetoric and the reality faced by young people with spina bifida moving to adult healthcare services. Conclusion: A possible way to facilitate successful transition of young people is using personal healthcare information as the locus for needed change. More research is needed to ascertain whether a ‘Person-Centred Record’, which is set to empower young people on their transition pathway, is an appropriate transition tool

A Magnified View of the Kinematics and Morphology of RCSGA 032727-132609: Zooming in on a Merger at z=1.7

We present a detailed analysis of multi-wavelength HST/WFC3 imaging and Keck/OSIRIS near-IR AO-assisted integral field spectroscopy for a highly magnified lensed galaxy at z=1.70. This young starburst is representative of UV-selected star-forming galaxies (SFG) at z~2 and contains multiple individual star-forming regions. Due to the lensing magnification, we can resolve spatial scales down to 100pc in the source plane of the galaxy. The velocity field shows disturbed kinematics suggestive of an ongoing interaction, and there is a clear signature of a tidal tail. We constrain the age, reddening, SFR and stellar mass of the star-forming clumps from SED modelling of the WFC3 photometry and measure their H-alpha luminosity, metallicity and outflow properties from the OSIRIS data. With strong star formation driven outflows in four clumps, RCSGA0327 is the first high redshift SFG at stellar mass <10^10 M_sun with spatially resolved stellar winds. We compare the H-alpha luminosities, sizes and dispersions of the star-forming regions to other high-z clumps as well as local giant HII regions and find no evidence for increased clump star formation surface densities in interacting systems, unlike in the local Universe. Spatially resolved SED modelling unveils an established stellar population at the location of the largest clump and a second mass concentration near the edge of the system which is not detected in H-alpha emission. This suggests a picture of an equal-mass mixed major merger, which has not triggered a new burst of star formation or caused a tidal tail in the gas-poor component.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures, accepted to Ap