Demographic Data for Development Decisionmaking: Case Studies From Ethiopia and Uganda

Analyzes the lack of demographic and socioeconomic data, limited access to and use of existing data, and insufficient demand for their application in policy making and resource allocation. Makes recommendations for greater access, demand, and use of data

Stimulation of bioprocesses by ultrasound

Ultrasound (US) has become a ubiquitous technological process in a large variety of scientific disciplines. However, little information exists on the use of ultrasound to enhance biological processes and/or processing and consequently this paper provides an overview of work reported to date on this topic. This review provides a brief introduction to ultrasound and the history of ultrasound as applied to bioprocesses. This is followed by a discussion of the influence of US on discrete enzyme systems, enzymes used in bioremediation, microbial fermentations and enzymatic hydrolysis of biopolymers. Augmentation of anaerobic digestion by US is then considered along with enhancement of enzymes in food science and technology. The use of ultrasonically stimulated enzymes in synthesis is then considered and other relevant miscellaneous topics are described. It is concluded that the precise mechanism of action of US in bio-processing remains to be elucidated though a variety of plausible suggestions are made

Population mobility and livelihood diversification among indigenous peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon

Throughout the Amazon, new roads, infrastructure, oil pipelines, colonist settlements, and mechanized agriculture, however, suggest an uncertain future for indigenous peoples. Indigenous communities of the Amazon are undergoing intense socio-economic, demographic, and cultural changes. There has been limited quantitative inquiry, however, into the determinants of change occurring among indigenous populations. The primary objective of this research is to examine the determinants of two important aspects of change occurring in indigenous populations: the adoption of non-farm employment (often referred to as livelihood diversification) and out-migration. Non-farm employment and out-migration may have unforeseen impacts, both positive and negative, on families, communities, and resource management institutions, and as such on the well-being of indigenous people and their lands. This research addresses the question, What are the individual, household, and contextual factors that lead indigenous households to decide to diversify livelihoods and participate in non-farm employment, or to have a member of the household move away temporarily or permanently? The research draws upon livelihoods and migration theories to examine population mobility among the indigenous. Household and community survey data and multi-level models are employed to make inferences about determinants of these important behaviors and their link to future resource use and livelihoods in the Amazon.Doctor of Public Healt

The impact of population, health, and environment projects: A synthesis of evidence

This working paper synthesizes the existing research and results from projects that integrate family planning with environment, livelihoods, natural-resource management, and other non-health development sectors. The report synthesizes the published and gray literature on current and past integrated projects and the experiences of implementers to generate a summary of the state of knowledge on integrated family planning and environment projects. Specifically, this synthesis documents what is being measured by integrated projects, the proven benefits of integration, and gaps in the evidence base. Based on this analysis, the synthesis highlights and discusses successes and challenges for documenting the impact of integrating family planning and non-health sector development projects. Moving forward, Population, Health, and Environment projects can use the information from this synthesis to identify and fill current gaps in the evidence to further build the case for why integrating family planning with sectors such as natural resource management and livelihoods is an effective evidence-based development approach

No one left behind: has the pursuit of FP2020’s 120 million additional users goal left some women behind? [version 2; peer review: 1 approved, 2 approved with reservations]

Background: An important question is whether the FP2020’s “120 million additional users” goal exacerbated inequities and led to a prioritization of populations within countries where substantial gains towards the goal could be made. We examine FP2020 country data for signs of inequity in gains in modern contraceptive prevalence (MCP). Methods: We selected 11 countries (Bangladesh, Burundi, Ethiopia, Haiti, Malawi, Mali, Nepal, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Zimbabwe) to conduct a bivariate analysis. We evaluated if MCP growth had been equitable by assessing MCP between two surveys stratified by residence, levels of education, age groups, marital status, and wealth. Results: In most countries, MCP increased among rural women and in seven African countries these gains were significant. In six countries, MCP gains were significant both among women with no education and in the lowest wealth group. MCP gains among young women aged 15-19 and 20-24 were seen in four African countries: Malawi, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that between two surveys since 2010 many countries saw MCP gains across different dimensions of equity and do not suggest a focus on expanded coverage at the expense of equity. As the family planning community begins to look ahead to the next partnership, this analysis can help inform the emerging FP2030 framework, which includes equity as a guiding principle

Contrasting Colonist and Indigenous Impacts on Amazonian Forests: Colonist versus Indigenous Deforestation

To examine differences in land use and environmental impacts between colonist and indigenous populations in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon, we combined data from household surveys and remotely sensed imagery that was collected from 778 colonist households in 64 colonization sectors, and 499 households from five indigenous groups in 36 communities. Overall, measures of deforestation and forest fragmentation were significantly greater for colonists than indigenous peoples. On average, colonist households had approximately double the area in agriculture and cash crops and 5.5 times the area in pasture as indigenous households. Nevertheless, substantial variation in land-use patterns existed among the five indigenous groups in measures such as cattle ownership and use of hired agricultural labor. These findings support the potential conservation value of indigenous lands while cautioning against uniform policies that homogenize indigenous ethnic groups

Population, Land Use and Deforestation in the Pan Amazon Basin: a Comparison of Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú and Venezuela

This paper discusses the linkages between population change, land use, and deforestation in the Amazon regions of Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, and Venezuela. We begin with a brief discussion of theories of population–environment linkages, and then focus on the case of deforestation in the PanAmazon. The core of the paper reviews available data on deforestation, population growth, migration and land use in order to see how well land cover change reflects demographic and agricultural change. The data indicate that population dynamics and net migration exhibit to deforestation in some states of the basin but not others. We then discuss other explanatory factors for deforestation, and find a close correspondence between land use and deforestation, which suggests that land use is loosely tied to demographic dynamics and mediates the influence of population on deforestation. We also consider national political economic contexts of Amazon change in the six countries, and find contrasting contexts, which also helps to explain the limited demographic-deforestation correspondence. The paper closes by noting general conclusions based on the data, topics in need of further research and recent policy proposals.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/42720/1/10668_2003_Article_6977.pd

Transversal injection for direct encoding of ancilla states for non-Clifford gates using stabilizer codes

Funding Information: Thank you to Austin Fowler for early feedback on the findings of this paper and Sam Elman for help with editing the manuscript. The views, opinions, and/or findings expressed are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government. This research was developed in part with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [under the Quantum Benchmark- ing (QB) program under Award No. HR00112230007 and HR001121S0026 contracts]. M.J.B. acknowledges the support of Google. M.J.B., J.G., and A.S. were supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T), Project No. CE170100012. A.S. was also supported by the Sydney Quantum Academy. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.Fault-tolerant, error-corrected quantum computation is commonly acknowledged to be crucial to the realization of large-scale quantum algorithms that could lead to extremely impactful scientific or commercial results. Achieving a universal set of quantum gate operations in a fault-tolerant, error-corrected framework suffers from a conservation of unpleasantness. In general, no matter what error-correction technique is employed, there is always one element of a universal gate set that carries a significant resource overhead - either in physical qubits, computational time, or both. Specifically, this is due to the application of non-Clifford gates. A common method for realizing these gates for stabilizer codes such as the surface code is a combination of three protocols: state injection, distillation, and gate teleportation. These protocols contribute to the resource overhead compared with logical operations such as a CNOT gate and contribute to the qubit resources for any error-corrected quantum algorithm. In this paper, we introduce a very simple protocol to potentially reduce this overhead for non-Clifford gates: transversal injection. Transversal injection modifies the initial physical states of all data qubits in a stabilizer code before standard encoding and results in the direct preparation of a large class of single qubit states, including resource states for non-Clifford logic gates. Preliminary results hint at high-quality fidelities at larger distances and motivate further research on this technique.Peer reviewe