Determinants of Health - How Important Is Income? - Evidence from Uganda

The health status of individuals is of great importance not only because of the direct utility health can provide but because of productivity losses and large indirect costs, caused by ill-health, which places demands on already stretched health systems and family support networks. This is particularly the case in Uganda where high levels of HIV/AIDS prevalence, over the last two decades, has had a debilitating effect on many families and their ability to escape poverty. Despite this however, the loss of productive units is yet to prompt in-depth research into establishing the main socio-economic determinants of morbidity, and in particular, find out the role incomes play in determining morbidity levels of Ugandans. Lack of research in this research area is especially surprising given the Ugandan governments emphasis, over the last decade, on poverty reduction through economic reforms which primarily aim at creating an enabling environment for economic agents to exploit by using their initial endowment of capabilities. Despite the relative success in reducing poverty levels, from 56% of the population in 1992 to 39% in 2002/3, there is evidence to suggest that households far below the poverty line are more likely to experience an extended duration of poverty, and therefore chronic poverty. The lack of human/health endowment appears to have played a major role in this. This paper fills the void in understanding the main socio-economic causes of sickness for all Ugandans, and in particular, the influence wealth has on health status. It provides the most comprehensive and up to date microeconometric analysis, on this research area, by using Uganda’s nationally representative household survey of 1999/2000. By adopting a 2SLS approach to control for endogeneity issues between income and health we are able to establish the importance of income in determining heath status, and compare the reliability of self reported health with anthropometric measures.Health, Income, Uganda, Self Reported Health, Anthropometrics

Graph inverse semigroups: their characterization and completion

Graph inverse semigroups generalize the polycyclic inverse monoids and play an important role in the theory of C*-algebras. This paper has two main goals: first, to provide an abstract characterization of graph inverse semigroups; and second, to show how they may be completed, under suitable conditions, to form what we call the Cuntz-Krieger semigroup of the graph. This semigroup is the ample semigroup of a topological groupoid associated with the graph, and the semigroup analogue of the Leavitt path algebra of the graph.Comment: Some minor corrections made and tangential material remove

The distribution of chlorophyll in the western Indian Ocean during the northeast monsoon period, February 13-July 16, 1965

This report contains the observations of phytoplankton pigment characteristics made during ATLANTIS II Cruise No. 15 in the western Indian Ocean and its reaches during the period of February 13 through July 16, 1965. As pointed out in a previous report for this region (Laird et al., 1964), the observations should by no means be considered synoptic since short-term variation will occur in biological measurements. The value of the present observations is greatly enhanced by the fact that they repeat and extend the previous data from ATLANTIS II Cruise No. 8 for the area, but are taken at the opposite period of the year for all regions. The data permit only a first approximation of the relative fertility in the area, yet the seasonal contrast becomes an important consideration in the analysis and interpretation of the data. It is believed that this represents the first such large-scale survey for Indian Ocean waters.The National Science Foundation under Grant NSF-GP 82

Development of an automated aircraft subsystem architecture generation and analysis tool

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a new computational framework to address future preliminary design needs for aircraft subsystems. The ability to investigate multiple candidate technologies forming subsystem architectures is enabled with the provision of automated architecture generation, analysis and optimization. Main focus lies with a demonstration of the frameworks workings, as well as the optimizers performance with a typical form of application problem. Design/methodology/approach – The core aspects involve a functional decomposition, coupled with a synergistic mission performance analysis on the aircraft, architecture and component levels. This may be followed by a complete enumeration of architectures, combined with a user defined technology filtering and concept ranking procedure. In addition, a hybrid heuristic optimizer, based on ant systems optimization and a genetic algorithm, is employed to produce optimal architectures in both component composition and design parameters. The optimizer is tested on a generic architecture design problem combined with modified Griewank and parabolic functions for the continuous space. Findings – Insights from the generalized application problem show consistent rediscovery of the optimal architectures with the optimizer, as compared to a full problem enumeration. In addition multi-objective optimization reveals a Pareto front with differences in component composition as well as continuous parameters. Research limitations/implications – This paper demonstrates the frameworks application on a generalized test problem only. Further publication will consider real engineering design problems. Originality/value – The paper addresses the need for future conceptual design methods of complex systems to consider a mixed concept space of both discrete and continuous nature via automated methods

Learning From Experience With Performance Assessment Frameworks for General Budget Support

This report provides the findings of a study financed by SECO and undertaken under the auspices of the OECD-DAC multi-country evaluation of General Budget Support (GBS). The overall objective was to gather preliminary lessons on what could be good international practice in the development\ud of Performance Assessment Frameworks (PAFs) for GBS. The study is based on the experience of three countries which have adopted harmonised PAFs – namely Ghana, Mozambique, and Tanzania, and two which are moving in this direction – Benin and Nicaragua. In order to assess the effectiveness of these PAFs, the study employed a simplified, standard framework reflecting the OECD-DAC guiding principles for the provision of budget support.\u

Hierarchical strategies for efficient fault recovery on the reconfigurable PAnDA device

A novel hierarchical fault-tolerance methodology for reconfigurable devices is presented. A bespoke multi-reconfigurable FPGA architecture, the programmable analogue and digital array (PAnDA), is introduced allowing fine-grained reconfiguration beyond any other FPGA architecture currently in existence. Fault blind circuit repair strategies, which require no specific information of the nature or location of faults, are developed, exploiting architectural features of PAnDA. Two fault recovery techniques, stochastic and deterministic strategies, are proposed and results of each, as well as a comparison of the two, are presented. Both approaches are based on creating algorithms performing fine-grained hierarchical partial reconfiguration on faulty circuits in order to repair them. While the stochastic approach provides insights into feasibility of the method, the deterministic approach aims to generate optimal repair strategies for generic faults induced into a specific circuit. It is shown that both techniques successfully repair the benchmark circuits used after random faults are induced in random circuit locations, and the deterministic strategies are shown to operate efficiently and effectively after optimisation for a specific use case. The methods are shown to be generally applicable to any circuit on PAnDA, and to be straightforwardly customisable for any FPGA fabric providing some regularity and symmetry in its structure

Low fertility increases descendant socioeconomic position but reduces long-term fitness in a modern post-industrial society.

Adaptive accounts of modern low human fertility argue that small family size maximizes the inheritance of socioeconomic resources across generations and may consequently increase long-term fitness. This study explores the long-term impacts of fertility and socioeconomic position (SEP) on multiple dimensions of descendant success in a unique Swedish cohort of 14 000 individuals born during 1915-1929. We show that low fertility and high SEP predict increased descendant socioeconomic success across four generations. Furthermore, these effects are multiplicative, with the greatest benefits of low fertility observed when SEP is high. Low fertility and high SEP do not, however, predict increased descendant reproductive success. Our results are therefore consistent with the idea that modern fertility limitation represents a strategic response to the local costs of rearing socioeconomically competitive offspring, but contradict adaptive models suggesting that it maximizes long-term fitness. This indicates a conflict in modern societies between behaviours promoting socioeconomic versus biological success. This study also makes a methodological contribution, demonstrating that the number of offspring strongly predicts long-term fitness and thereby validating use of fertility data to estimate current selective pressures in modern populations. Finally, our findings highlight that differences in fertility and SEP can have important long-term effects on the persistence of social inequalities across generations