Trends in Maize Grain, Roller and Breakfast Meal Prices In Zambia

1. Compared to the general price of goods and services as measured by the consumer price index, the prices of retail roller and breakfast maize meal have declined by between 34 and 51% in the major urban markets of Zambia between 1994 and 2010. 2. Inflation-adjusted wholesale maize grain prices have also declined over this period but by a smaller amount. 3. Inflation-adjusted marketing margins between the wholesale price of maize grain and the retail prices of roller and breakfast meal have declined from 41% to 64% since the early 1990s when the market liberalization process began. Since the early 1990s, there has been substantial new investment in commercial maize milling as well as by the informal hammer milling industry. Enhanced competition at this stage in the maize value chain appears to have conferred important food security benefits to urban consumers.Zambia, maize, grain prices, Agricultural and Food Policy, Demand and Price Analysis,

Protecting me from my directive: ensuring appropriate safeguards for advance directives in dementia

With one in six people over 80 now suffering from dementia, advance directives provide an important means of empowerment. Upholding directives in the context of dementia, however, raises extra challenges, given the potential for the directive to conflict with an assessment of what is in the person's current best interests. Given the profound harm that tying a person with dementia to their previous wishes can do, it is essential that we have sufficient safeguards in place to ensure that we only uphold such directives where we can be sure they are truly autonomous and are intended to apply to the situation at hand-safeguards which are at present, severely lacking. This article will consider various mechanisms by which safeguards can be built into the legal regime to ensure that the original decision is autonomous, including making it mandatory for the person to undergo a consultation with a healthcare professional, which would involve a contemporaneous capacity assessment. Clinicians must also be confident that the directive applies to the situation at hand. Introducing formalities, including a standardised (though not mandatory) proforma, may help to enhance specificity about when the directive is triggered, and to what treatments it relates, to enable clinicians to better assess the directive's applicability. A national registry for advance directives might also be beneficial. It will be argued that health care professionals will have to play a much greater role in the drafting and registering of advance directives, if we are to feel comfortable in upholding them

Conditions of world peace

The second course of public lectures on the Godwin Foundation in Public Affairs of the Rice Institute, delivered by His Excellency, the Right Honorable Sir Auckland Geddes, British ambassador to the United States, at the City Auditorium of Houston, May 12 and 13, 1921.I. Deeper causes of the war -- II. Permanent issues of the peac

Resolving disagreement: a multi-jurisdictional comparative analysis of disputes about children’s medical care

Recently, the English courts have dealt with a number high-profile, emotive disputes over the care of very ill children, including Charlie Gard, Alfie Evans, and Tafida Raqeeb. It is perhaps fair to say such cases have become a regular feature of the courts in England. But is the situation similar in other jurisdictions? If not, are there lessons to be learned from these jurisdictions that do not seem to need to call on judges to resolve these otherwise intractable disputes? We argue that many of the differences we see between jurisdictions derive from cultural and social differences manifesting in both the legal rules in place, and how the various parties interact with, and defer to, one another. We further argue that while recourse to the courts is undesirable in many ways, it is also indicative of a society that permits difference of views and provides for these differences to be considered in a public manner following clear procedural and precedential rules. These are the hallmarks of a liberal democracy that allows for pluralism of values, while still remaining committed to protecting the most vulnerable parties in these disputes-children facing life-limiting conditions

Building an integrated model of chromosome congression

A universal feature of mitosis is that all chromosomes become aligned at the spindle equator--the halfway point between the two spindle poles--prior to anaphase onset. This migratory event is called congression, and is powered by centromere-bound protein machines called kinetochores. This Commentary aims to document recent advances concerning the two kinetochore-based force-generating mechanisms that drive mitotic chromosome congression in vertebrate cells: depolymerisation-coupled pulling (DCP) and lateral sliding. We aim to explore how kinetochores can 'read-out' their spatial position within the spindle, and adjust these force-generating mechanisms to ensure chromosomes reach, and then remain, at the equator. Finally, we will describe the 'life history' of a chromosome, and provide a working model for how individual mechanisms are integrated to ensure efficient and successful congression

Claiming in contract for wrongful conception

Reflects on the contractual approach adopted by the court in ARB v IVF Hammersmith (CA) when considering whether the costs of raising a wrongfully conceived child were recoverable. Discusses claims that a clinic breached an express or implied contractual term to obtain consent to the thawing and implanting of frozen embryos, and criticises the court's extension of tortious principles from earlier case law into a contractual context

Defining the limits of parental authority: Charlie Gard, best interests and the risk of significant harm threshold

Examines Great Ormond Street Hospital v Yates (CA) on whether the court had the inherent jurisdiction to rule that it was not in the best interests of a child suffering from mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome for his parents to take him to the US where a doctor was willing to administer experimental nucleoside therapy, given that his UK medical team believed this would be futile and that life-sustaining treatment should be withdrawn instead