5,274 research outputs found
Building community resilience in mine impacted communities : a study on delivery of health services in Papua New Guinea : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
The purpose of this study was to explore the building of Community Resilience in mine-impacted communities in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The study aimed to establish the general relationship between community resilience, community capitals and the delivery of health services. It investigated the delivery of health services in three mining communities in PNG to see how these services contribute to or detract from the building of resilience. The study investigated relevant models of community resilience from the literature, and how the way policy functions in PNG can be related to these models. The study also developed a way of quantifying the impact of mining on health service delivery (through the use of community capitals) and the building of resilience in these communities. Furthermore, the thesis develops an indigenous, Melanesian-centric āBilum Frameworkā approach to resilience to create greater understanding of how resilience in the mining communities can be strengthened through improved access to health services.
Three mining communities were selected as case studies, each representing a different stage of mining: (i) the beginning; (ii) the operational; and, (iii) post-mine closure. A mixed method approach comprising both quantitative and qualitative methods was used to collect data for this study. A survey questionnaire was designed to collect views of community members who accessed health services in their respective communities. Results from the survey questionnaire were converted to proxy indicators and led to the development of a Community Resilience Index (CRI) to provide a measure of resilience in each community. The qualitative research methods included document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and purposive observations. Document analysis was important in reviewing relevant policy documents and other literature to link theories to the experiences of the people while the latter methods contributed to describing peopleās encounters in accessing health services.
Analysis showed inconsistencies in the levels of resilience in these communities that varied with the stages of mining: both the beginning and post- mine closure stages demonstrated significantly lower levels of community resilience than the operational phase. Findings from the research indicated a lack of access to health services ā a key influence in building resilience ā is the result a range of factors including insufficient finances, weak sector governance, and the need for infrastructure and transport. The Bilum Framework is proposed as an approach that allows decision-makers to target assistance to strengthen and support specific community capitals and hence more effectively build community resilience in the mining communities in PNG
Structural Reform and Firm Profitability in Developing Countries
We extend agency theory to propose that structural reform positively impacts firm profitability in developing countries because the improvements in external monitoring that accompany structural reform decrease the agency costs faced by firms. However, we also argue that not all firms benefit equally from structural reform because their agency problems are impacted differently. Hence, we propose that structural reform results in higher improvements in profitability for domestic state-owned and domestic private firms than it does for subsidiaries of foreign firms. Results of the analyses of the largest 500 firms in Latin America support the arguments, suggesting that, contrary to the views of many critics of globalization, domestic firms are the main beneficiaries of structural reform in developing countries.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64370/1/wp940.pd
Polynomial Time Algorithm for Min-Ranks of Graphs with Simple Tree Structures
The min-rank of a graph was introduced by Haemers (1978) to bound the Shannon
capacity of a graph. This parameter of a graph has recently gained much more
attention from the research community after the work of Bar-Yossef et al.
(2006). In their paper, it was shown that the min-rank of a graph G
characterizes the optimal scalar linear solution of an instance of the Index
Coding with Side Information (ICSI) problem described by the graph G. It was
shown by Peeters (1996) that computing the min-rank of a general graph is an
NP-hard problem. There are very few known families of graphs whose min-ranks
can be found in polynomial time. In this work, we introduce a new family of
graphs with efficiently computed min-ranks. Specifically, we establish a
polynomial time dynamic programming algorithm to compute the min-ranks of
graphs having simple tree structures. Intuitively, such graphs are obtained by
gluing together, in a tree-like structure, any set of graphs for which the
min-ranks can be determined in polynomial time. A polynomial time algorithm to
recognize such graphs is also proposed.Comment: Accepted by Algorithmica, 30 page
On the Existence of MDS Codes Over Small Fields With Constrained Generator Matrices
We study the existence over small fields of Maximum Distance Separable (MDS)
codes with generator matrices having specified supports (i.e. having specified
locations of zero entries). This problem unifies and simplifies the problems
posed in recent works of Yan and Sprintson (NetCod'13) on weakly secure
cooperative data exchange, of Halbawi et al. (arxiv'13) on distributed
Reed-Solomon codes for simple multiple access networks, and of Dau et al.
(ISIT'13) on MDS codes with balanced and sparse generator matrices. We
conjecture that there exist such MDS codes as long as , if the specified supports of the generator matrices satisfy the so-called
MDS condition, which can be verified in polynomial time. We propose a
combinatorial approach to tackle the conjecture, and prove that the conjecture
holds for a special case when the sets of zero coordinates of rows of the
generator matrix share with each other (pairwise) at most one common element.
Based on our numerical result, the conjecture is also verified for all . Our approach is based on a novel generalization of the well-known Hall's
marriage theorem, which allows (overlapping) multiple representatives instead
of a single representative for each subset.Comment: 8 page
Implementation of a Discrete Element Method for the space-time modeling of loading in the case of a soft shock: qualitative approach
The aim of this study is to modelize the space-time loading induced on a target by a deformable impactor, in the case of a āsoftā shock.The originality of this work resides in the use of discrete elements to model the behaviour of the impactor, where large displacements an ddeformations can occur .A qualitative analysis is then developed to describe the changes in load applied to the target, as a function of the parameters relevant to such a shock.AN
Weakly Secure MDS Codes for Simple Multiple Access Networks
We consider a simple multiple access network (SMAN), where sources of
unit rates transmit their data to a common sink via relays. Each relay is
connected to the sink and to certain sources. A coding scheme (for the relays)
is weakly secure if a passive adversary who eavesdrops on less than
relay-sink links cannot reconstruct the data from each source. We show that
there exists a weakly secure maximum distance separable (MDS) coding scheme for
the relays if and only if every subset of relays must be collectively
connected to at least sources, for all . Moreover, we
prove that this condition can be verified in polynomial time in and .
Finally, given a SMAN satisfying the aforementioned condition, we provide
another polynomial time algorithm to trim the network until it has a sparsest
set of source-relay links that still supports a weakly secure MDS coding
scheme.Comment: Accepted at ISIT'1
- ā¦