Export Processing Zone Expansion in Madagascar: What are the Labor Market and Gender Impacts?.

This paper analyses part of the controversy over export processing zones (EPZs)—the labour market and gender impacts—using unique time-series labour force survey data from an African setting: urban Madagascar, in which the EPZ (or Zone Franche) grew very rapidly during the 1990s. Employment in the Zone Franche exhibits some basic patterns seen elsewhere in export processing industries of the developing world, such as the predominance of young, semi-skilled female workers. Taking advantage of microdata availability, we estimate earnings regressions to assess sector and gender wage premia. Zone Franche employment is found to represent a significant step-up in pay for women who would otherwise be found in poorly remunerated informal sector work. As it provides relatively high wage opportunities for those with relatively low levels of schooling, export processing development may also eventually have significant impacts on poverty. Further, by disproportionately drawing women from the low-wage informal sector (where the gender pay gap is very large) to the relatively well-paid export processing jobs (where pay is not only higher but also similar for men and women with similar qualifications), the EPZ has the potential to contribute to improved overall gender equity in earnings in the urban economy. Along many non-wage dimensions, jobs in the EPZ are comparable to or even superior to other parts of the formal sector. However, the sector is also marked by very long working hours and high turnover, which may work to prevent it from being a source of long-term employment and economic advancement for women.genre; discrimination salariale; Zone Franche; Gender; Wage gap; Export Processing Zone; Madagascar;

Evaluation of the Population and Poverty Research Initiative (PopPov)

Since 2005, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, with collaboration and co-funding from research councils in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, and Norway and from the World Bank, has invested in a portfolio of social science research on the relationship between population dynamics and micro- and macroeconomic outcomes. It is known as the Population and Poverty Research Initiative (PopPov), and its geographic focus is on subSaharan Africa (SSA). The starting premises that led to the development of PopPov were that evidence showing that population dynamics could affect economic outcomes might increase the interest of ministers of finance in funding population policies and that they might be most convinced by rigorous research done by respected economists. The core aim of the program has been to build (or, in some cases, rebuild) and advance the field of economic demography, orienting the work toward research that would be relevant for policy and would increase recognition by economic policymakers of the value of lowering the rate of population growth and investing in family planning (FP). The program also aimed to strengthen the capacity of researchers in SSA. The PopPov initiative tried to achieve these aims through four main components: (1) grants to support research on PopPov core topics of interest, (2) fellowships to support graduate students preparing their doctoral dissertations, (3) conferences and workshops to support the development of networking opportunities, and (4) other dissemination activities. PopPov has funded 56 doctoral fellows and, together with its partners, has supported 61 research projects. Seven international conferences and additional workshops have been held, and there have been several other dissemination activities. The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) and the Center for Global Development (CGD) have been the secretariats for PopPov. Since 2008, the Institute of International Education (IIE) has administered the fellowship program.In November 2012, to help guide its decisions about both the substance and means of future investments, the foundation issued a request for proposals (RFP) for an evaluation of PopPov. The RAND Corporation was selected to conduct the evaluation

Psychiatric Evaluation of the Agitated Patient: Consensus Statement of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry Project BETA Psychiatric Evaluation Workgroup

It is difficult to fully assess an agitated patient, and the complete psychiatric evaluation usually cannot be completed until the patient is calm enough to participate in a psychiatric interview. Nonetheless, emergency clinicians must perform an initial mental status screening to begin this process as soon as the agitated patient presents to an emergency setting. For this reason, the psychiatric evaluation of the agitated patient can be thought of as a 2-step process. First, a brief evaluation must be aimed at determining the most likely cause of agitation, so as to guide preliminary interventions to calm the patient. Once the patient is calmed, more extensive psychiatric assessment can be completed. The goal of the emergency assessment of the psychiatric patient is not necessarily to obtain a definitive diagnosis. Rather, ascertaining a differential diagnosis, determining safety, and developing an appropriate treatment and disposition plan are the goals of the assessment. This article will summarize what components of the psychiatric assessment can and should be done at the time the agitated patient presents to the emergency setting. The complete psychiatric evaluation of the patient whose agitation has been treated successfully is beyond the scope of this article and Project BETA (Best practices in Evaluation and Treatment of Agitation), but will be outlined briefly to give the reader an understanding of what a full psychiatric assessment would entail. Other issues related to the assessment of the agitated patient in the emergency setting will also be discussed

INtegration of DEPression Treatment into HIV Care in Uganda (INDEPTH-Uganda): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Despite 10 to% of persons living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa having clinical depression, and the consequences of depression for key public health outcomes (HIV treatment adherence and condom use), depression treatment is rarely integrated into HIV care programs. Task-shifting, protocolized approaches to depression care have been used to overcome severe shortages of mental health specialists in developing countries, but not in sub-Saharan Africa and not with HIV clients. The aims of this trial are to evaluate the implementation outcomes and cost-effectiveness of a task-shifting, protocolized model of antidepressant care for HIV clinics in Uganda. METHODS/DESIGN: INDEPTH-Uganda is a cluster randomized controlled trial that compares two task-shifting models of depression care - a protocolized model versus a model that relies on the clinical acumen of trained providers to provide depression care in ten public health HIV clinics in Uganda. In addition to data abstracted from routine data collection mechanisms and supervision logs, survey data will be collected from patient and provider longitudinal cohorts; at each site, a random sample of 150 medically stable patients who are depressed according to the PHQ-2 screening will be followed for 12 months, and providers involved in depression care implementation will be followed over 24 months. These data will be used to assess whether the two models differ on implementation outcomes (proportion screened, diagnosed, treated; provider fidelity to model of care), provider adoption of treatment care knowledge and practices, and depression alleviation. A cost-effectiveness analysis will be conducted to compare the relative use of resources by each model. DISCUSSION: If effective and resource-efficient, the task-shifting, protocolized model will provide an approach to building the capacity for sustainable integration of depression treatment in HIV care settings across sub-Saharan Africa and improving key public health outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION: INDEPTH-Uganda has been registered with the National Institutes of Health sponsored clinical trials registry (3 February 2013) and has been assigned the identifier NCT02056106

Nuclear ab initio calculations of He-6 beta-decay for beyond the Standard Model studies

Precision measurements of beta-decay observables offer the possibility to search for deviations from the Standard Model. A possible discovery of such deviations requires accompanying first-principles calculations. Here we compute the nuclear structure corrections for the beta-decay of He-6 which is of central interest in several experimental efforts. We employ the impulse approximation together with wave functions calculated using the ab initio no-core shell model with potentials based on chiral effective field theory. We use these state-of-the-art calculations to give a novel and comprehensive analysis of theoretical uncertainties. We find that nuclear corrections, which we compute within the sensitivity of future experiments, create significant deviation from the naive Gamow-Teller predictions, making their accurate assessment essential in searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. (C) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V

Silicon photonic 2.5D integrated multi-chip module receiver

We demonstrate the first 2.5D integrated, wavelength division multiplexing, silicon photonic receiver. The multi-chip module utilizes a silicon interposer to integrate the four-channel photonic cascaded microdisk receiver with four electronic transimpedance amplifiers