Evaluation and Impact of Training in the CGIAR

This study was commissioned by the interim Science Council (iSC) to review training within the CGIAR as it contributes to capacity strengthening in the NARS. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the quality and relevance, efficiency and effectiveness terms of intermediate impacts in strengthening of the NARS and, to the extent possible, impacts in the CGIAR’s goals. The study was expected to provide recommendations to help Centers, Donors, the NARS and the System to strengthen and plan their future activities in relation to training and capacity strengthening. The Review Panel was composed of Elliot Stern (Chair), Lucia de Vaccaro and John Lyna

THE THEORY AND MEASUREMENT OF ELASTICITY OF SUBSTITUTION IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE 1

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73671/1/j.1467-6435.1962.tb00077.x.pd

Systemwide Reviews in the CGIAR: Concepts, Options, and Recommendations

Study commissioned by the Oversight Committee of system-wide reviews in the CGIAR, conducted by a team headed by Martin Piñeiro and including Elliott Stern, and Dana Dalrymple. The study was considered by the Oversight Committee at CGIAR International Centers Week 2000, and circulated to CGIAR members. The Committee said it would implement the 15 recommendations of the study, and invited comments.Originally conceived as a retrospective review of the third system review of the CGIAR, the study was expanded to cover the first two system reviews, and system-level review processes in general. The study found that in contrast to the first two, the third review of the System suffered from the combination of a largely external review panel whose members were unfamiliar with the CGIAR, and the lack of preparatory work to define the issues. It considered various options for future reviews from the point of view of objectives, structure, and procedure, and made recommendations for each.There are two annexes with detailed information on the CGIAR review system, and the third System Review

Introduction – Rethinking Impact Evaluation for Development

This IDS Bulletin is the first of two special issues presenting contributions from the event ‘Impact Innovation and Learning: Towards a Research and Practice Agenda for the Future’, organised by IDS in March 2013. The initiative, as well as these two issues, represent a ‘rallying cry’ for impact evaluation to rise to the challenges of a post?MDG/post?2015 development agenda. This introduction articulates first what these challenges are, and then goes on to summarise how the contributors propose to meet these challenges in terms of methodological and institutional innovation. Increasingly ambitious development goals, multiple layers of governance and lines of accountability require adequate causal inference frameworks and less ambitious expectations on the span of direct influence single interventions can achieve, as well as awareness of multiple bias types. Institutions need to be researched and become more impact?oriented and learning?oriented

Introduction – Towards Systemic Approaches to Evaluation and Impact

This IDS Bulletin is the second of two that follow an Institute of Development Studies event seeking to define an agenda for research and practice of development impact evaluation. It focuses on exploring the potential of systems ideas and complexity concepts to meet the increasingly complex challenges of an increasingly ambitious development agenda. In particular, the contributions seek to: (a) redefine ‘learning’ according to the number of ‘learning loops’ involved; (b) understand how to identify the most relevant impact evaluation questions; (c) simulate systems states in two sectors (leather and health) following the implementation of (combinations of) different policy options and other events; and finally, (d) shake the foundations of the impact evaluation institutional system, recommending that the notions of multiple perspectives and system boundaries are fully embraced, and that the system ultimately transitions from an ‘evaluation industrial complex’ to an ‘evaluation adaptive complex’. While the issue is a step in the right direction, much more work remains to be done

Discovery of carbon monoxide in the upper atmosphere of Pluto

Pluto's icy surface has changed colour and its atmosphere has swelled since its last closest approach to the Sun in 1989. The thin atmosphere is produced by evaporating ices, and so can also change rapidly, and in particular carbon monoxide should be present as an active thermostat. Here we report the discovery of gaseous CO via the 1.3mm wavelength J=2-1 rotational transition, and find that the line-centre signal is more than twice as bright as a tentative result obtained by Bockelee-Morvan et al. in 2000. Greater surface-ice evaporation over the last decade could explain this, or increased pressure could have caused the atmosphere to expand. The gas must be cold, with a narrow line-width consistent with temperatures around 50 K, as predicted for the very high atmosphere, and the line brightness implies that CO molecules extend up to approximately 3 Pluto radii above the surface. The upper atmosphere must have changed markedly over only a decade since the prior search, and more alterations could occur by the arrival of the New Horizons mission in 2015.Comment: 5 pages; accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

Runaway Growth During Planet Formation: Explaining the Size Distribution of Large Kuiper Belt Objects

Runway growth is an important stage in planet formation during which large protoplanets form, while most of the initial mass remains in small planetesimals. The amount of mass converted into large protoplanets and their resulting size distribution are not well understood. Here, we use analytic work, that we confirm by coagulation simulations, to describe runaway growth and the corresponding evolution of the velocity dispersion. We find that runaway growth proceeds as follows: Initially all the mass resides in small planetesimals, with mass surface density \sigma, and large protoplanets start to form by accreting small planetesimals. This growth continues until growth by merging large protoplanets becomes comparable to growth by planetesimal accretion. This condition sets in when \Sigma/\sigma ~\alpha^{3/4} ~ 10^{-3}, where \Sigma is the mass surface density in protoplanets in a given logarithmic mass interval and \alpha is the ratio of the size of a body to its Hill radius. From then on, protoplanetary growth and the evolution of the velocity dispersion become self-similar and \Sigma remains roughly constant, since an increase in \Sigma by accretion of small planetesimals is balanced by a decrease due to merging with large protoplanets. We show that this growth leads to a protoplanet size distribution given by N(>R) \propto R^{-3} where N(>R) is the number of objects with radii greater than R (i.e., a differential power-law index of 4). We apply our results to the Kuiper Belt, which is a relic of runaway growth. Our results successfully match the observed Kuiper belt size distribution, they illuminate the physical processes that shaped it and explain the total mass that is present in large Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) today. This work suggests that the current mass in large KBOs is primordial and that it has not been significantly depleted. AbridgedComment: 13 pages, 7 figue