Prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in the Seychelles according to different definitions, contribution of components, and agreement between different definitions

Background: The metabolic syndrome (MS) represents a cluster of metabolic disorders that predicts diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Several definitions exist and further descriptive and prospective data are needed to compare these definitions and their significance in different populations. Objective: We examined, in a country of the African region, i) the prevalence of MS according to three major definitions (ATP, IDF, WHO); ii) the contribution of individual MS components; and iii) the agreement between the three considered definitions. We also examined the prevalence among diabetics and non-diabetics. Methods: We conducted an examination survey in a sample representative of the general population aged 25-64 of the Seychelles (Indian Ocean, African region), attended by 1255 persons (participation rate of 80.2%). Results: The prevalence of MS was similar with either definition of MS in men (24%--25%) but differed in women (WHO: 25%, ATP: 32%; IDF: 35%). Upon exclusion of diabetic persons, the prevalence was 5-10% lower for all three MS definitions: most diabetic persons had MS although a substantial proportion of diabetic men aged 45--64 did not have MS. The following components were found most often among persons with MS: 90% had high blood pressure (HBP) and 78% had obesity (ATP); 95% had obesity and 84% had HBP (WHO), and 89% had HBP and 75% had impaired glucose regulation (IDF) - not considering impaired glucose regulation and obesity that are compulsory components of the WHO and IDF definitions, respectively. Among persons with MS based on either of the three definitions (37% of total population), less than 80% met both ATP and IDF criteria, 67% both WHO and IDF criteria, 54% both WHO and ATP criteria and only 37% met all three definitions. Conclusion: We found a fairly high prevalence of MS in an African population. However, because there was only poor agreement between the 3 MS definitions, the fairly similar proportions of MS based on ATP, IDF or WHO definitions identified, to a substantial extent, different subjects as having MS.

Prevalence of the metabolic syndrome in the Seychelles according to different definitions, contribution of components, and agreement between different definitions

Background: The metabolic syndrome (MS) represents a cluster of metabolic disorders that predicts diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Several definitions exist and further descriptive and prospective data are needed to compare these definitions and their significance in different populations. Objective: We examined, in a country of the African region, i) the prevalence of MS according to three major definitions (ATP, IDF, WHO); ii) the contribution of individual MS components; and iii) the agreement between the three considered definitions. We also examined the prevalence among diabetics and non-diabetics. Methods: We conducted an examination survey in a sample representative of the general population aged 25-64 of the Seychelles (Indian Ocean, African region), attended by 1255 persons (participation rate of 80.2%). Results: The prevalence of MS was similar with either definition of MS in men (24%-25%) but differed in women (WHO: 25%, ATP: 32%; IDF: 35%). Upon exclusion of diabetic persons, the prevalence was 5-10% lower for all three MS definitions: most diabetic persons had MS although a substantial proportion of diabetic men aged 45-64 did not have MS. The following components were found most often among persons with MS: 90% had high blood pressure (HBP) and 78% had obesity (ATP); 95% had obesity and 84% had HBP (WHO), and 89% had HBP and 75% had impaired glucose regulation (IDF) -not considering impaired glucose regulation and obesity that are compulsory components of the WHO and IDF definitions, respectively. Among persons with MS based on either of the three definitions (37% of total population), less than 80% met both ATP and IDF criteria, 67% both WHO and IDF criteria, 54% both WHO and ATP criteria and only 37% met all three definitions. Conclusions. We found a fairly high prevalence of MS in an African population. However, because there was only poor agreement between the 3 MS definitions, the fairly similar proportions of MS based on ATP, IDF or WHO definitions identified, to a substantial extent, different subjects as having MS.

Get a GRIP: Should Area Revenue Coverage Be Offered through the Farm Bill or as a Crop Insurance Program? 2007

The successful expansion of the U.S. crop insurance program has not eliminated ad hoc disaster assistance. An alternative currently being explored by members of Congress and others in preparation of the 2007 farm bill is to simply remove the “ad hoc” part of disaster assistance programs by creating a standing program that would automatically funnel aid to hard-hit regions and crops. One form such a program could take can be found in the area yield and area revenue insurance programs currently offered by the U.S. crop insurance program. The Group Risk Plan (GRP) and Group Risk Income Protection (GRIP) programs automatically trigger payments when county yields or revenues, respectively, fall below a producer-elected coverage level. The per-acre taxpayer costs of offering GRIP in Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa for corn and soybeans through the crop insurance program are estimated. These results are used to determine the amount of area revenue coverage that could be offered to farmers as part of a standing farm bill disaster program. Approximately 55% of taxpayer support for GRIP flows to the crop insurance industry. A significant portion of this support comes in the form of net underwriting gains. The expected rate of return on money put at risk by private crop insurance companies under the current Standard Reinsurance Agreement is approximately 100%. Taking this industry support and adding in the taxpayer support for GRIP that flows to producers would fund a county target revenue program at the 93% coverage level.

De la gestion des ressources fauniques à la participation au processus d'évaluation environnementale : l'évolution d'un droit constitutionnel chez les Cris de la Baie James

Les Cris de la Baie James sont parmi les premiers bénéficiaires d'un traité moderne qui prévoit un rôle déterminant pour les Autochtones dans la gestion de l'environnement et du développement des ressources naturelles. À travers la Convention de la Baie James et du Nord québécois, les Cris participent à la gestion de l'environnement et sont assurés d'un droit de regard sur les projets de développement futurs dans l'ensemble de leur partie du territoire conventionné. Cette participation, qui est le fruit d'une intense négociation, est aujourd'hui renforcée, à travers des ententes de coopération subséquentes, grâce notamment, à l'émergence du mouvement écologiste qui a contribué à la reconnaissance d'un rôle particulier pour les Autochtones à l'égard de l'environnement. Par l'examen des mécanismes de protection de l'environnement, notamment le processus d'évaluation environnementale, aux termes du chapitre 22 de la Convention de la Baie James et du Nord québécois, cette étude met en lumière l'importance du processus de négociation et des droits qui en résultent par rapport à ceux reconnus en vertu de la doctrine des droits ancestraux telle que développée récemment par les tribunaux canadiens.

Évaluation de la participation des Cris dans la procédure d'évaluation environnementale de la Convention de la Baie James et du Nord Québécois (CBJNQ) /

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Community Participation in Ecotourism: An Inclusive Development Option for Kerala

The inferences obtained from the study are presented in coherent area-specific levels so as to understand the ecotourism and its sub-sector areas for the researchers and policy makers about the issues, importances and potentialities of the sector. An analysis of the tourism sector in Kerala has shown tremendous growth both in terms of tourist arrivals and in terms of revenue generation from direct and indirect sources. The foreign tourist visitors in Kerala in 2014 was 9,23,336 which shows 7.60 percent increase from the last year and the domestic tourist visitors were 1,16,95,411 which again shows 7.71 percent increase, is a clear evidence of its potential. In 2014 the industry contributed revenue of 24885.44 crores from direct and indirect sources giving rise to an increase of 12.11 percent from the last year. A dichotomy of tourists and ecotourists shows that tourists in the ecotourism destinations come to 42.6 percent of the total, shows the scope, significance and its potential. Correlation of zone-wise tourist arrivals based on the ecotourism destinations highlights the fact that with only 19 of the 64 destinations that come in the central zone are the most preferred centres (around 54 percent) for the domestic as well as foreign tourists. The north zone encompassing 6 districts with rich biodiversity shows that the tourists‟ arrival patterns exhibit less promising results. Though the north zone has 31 ecotourism destinations of the state receives only 6.19 percent of the foreign visitors. The ecotourism activities in the state are primarily managed by the Eco-Development Committees (EDCs) and the Vana Samrakshana Samithies (VSS) under the Forest Development Agency of Kerala. Social class-wise categorization of membership shows that 13142 families have membership in 190 EDCs with SC (28 percent), ST (33 percent) and other marginalised communities (39 percent). But this in the VSS shows that 400 VSS have 59085 members actively engaged in ecotourism activities and social category of the VSS makes clear that majority are from the other marginalized fringe households with 62 percent where as the participation of SC is 12 percent and ST is 26 percent. An evaluation of the socio-economic and demographic matrix of the community members involved in ecotourism activities brings out region specific differences. About 75.70 percent of the respondents are males and the rest are females. Majority of the respondents (about 60 percent) are in the age group of 20 to 40 years, followed by the age group of 40-50 (20 percent). The average age of respondents in the three zones is between 35 and 37 years. The majority of the respondents are married, a few are unmarried. Average family size is 4-5 members and differences are identified among zones. Average number of adults per household is 3 and child per household is 2. Majority have an education of 10th class and below i.e. about 60 percent of the sample have only basic school education like primary, secondary and high school (i.e. up to SSLC but not passed) level. About 18 percent are SSLC passed, 10 percent are undergraduates whereas 6 percent constitute respondents having qualification of graduation and above. Majority of the „graduates and above‟ are from south and central zone. Inter-zone differences in educational profile are also identified with lesser number of „graduates and above‟ are identified in the north zone compared to the other two zones. Investigating into the income and livelihood options of the respondents gives insight about the prominence of ecotourism as an employment and livelihood option for the community members, as more than 90 percent of the respondents have cited tourism sector as their main employment option. Most (49.30 percent) of respondents get 100 percent income from tourism related activities, followed by 37.30 percent of community members have income between 75-99 percent from tourism whereas the rest (13 percent) have less than 74 percent of their income from tourism and there exists difference between zones and percentage of income. Financial habit shows that about 49.7 percent hold active bank accounts, 61 percent have savings behaviour and 73.8 percent have indebtedness. Analysis about the ownership of house brings to light that 37 percent of respondents live in their own house followed by 25.7 percent in government funded/provided house and 21 percent in their parent‟s house and 3.5 percent in rented house. About 12 percent of the respondents have other kinds of accommodation facilities such as staff quarters, etc. But in the case of north zone majority i.e. 52 percent primarily depend on the government funded house indicating the effectiveness of government housing programme. Standard of living measured in SLI frameworks shows that majority of the respondents have medium SLI values (42.3 percent); the remaining 47.7 percent have low SLI and 10 percent have high SLI. The community members have been benefitted immensely from forest and its resources. Since the ecotourism destinations are located amidst the wildlife settings, majority of them depend on forest for their livelihood. The information on the tourist‟s demographic characteristics like age, sex, educational qualification and annual income show that the age category of domestic and foreign tourists falls below the age group of less than 35 years (about 65 percent), whereas only 16 percent of tourists are aged above 46 years. The age group below 25 years consists of more international tourists (31.3 percent) compared to the proportion of domestic tourists (12.5 percent). Male-female ratio shows that the males constitute 56 percent of the sample and females with 44 percent. The factors determining the impact of ecotourism programmes in the community was evaluated with the aid of a factor analysis with 12 selected statements. The worries and concerns of the community members about the impact of ecotourism on the environment are well understood from this analysis. It can be drawn that environment protection and the role of ecotourism in improving the income and livelihood options of the local communities is the most important factor concerning the community members.

Predicting sense of community and participation by applying machine learning to open government data

Community capacity is used to monitor socio-economic development. It is composed of a number of dimensions, which can be measured to understand the possible issues in the implementation of a policy or the outcome of a project targeting a community. Measuring community capacity dimensions is usually expensive and time consuming, requiring locally organised surveys. Therefore, we investigate a technique to estimate them by applying the Random Forests algorithm on secondary open government data. This research focuses on the prediction of measures for two dimensions: sense of community and participation. The most important variables for this prediction were determined. The variables included in the datasets used to train the predictive models complied with two criteria: nationwide availability; sufficiently fine-grained geographic breakdown, i.e. neighbourhood level. The models explained 77% of the sense of community measures and 63% of participation. Due to the low geographic detail of the outcome measures available, further research is required to apply the predictive models to a neighbourhood level. The variables that were found to be more determinant for prediction were only partially in agreement with the factors that, according to the social science literature consulted, are the most influential for sense of community and participation. This finding should be further investigated from a social science perspective, in order to be understood in depth.

The United States-Central American Free Trade Agreement: fiscal implications for the Central American countries

Includes bibliography

Structural determinants of tax revenue in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1990-2009

Includes Bibliography

Issues, effects and implications of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Agreement for CARICOM economies

Includes bibliography

Workshop on public participation in international negotiations on environmental matters: Panel on environmental justice and access rights for sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean

This publication was prepared with financial support from the United Nations Development Account and the project “Addressing critical socio-environmental challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean ”

What Happened to Participation? Urban Development and Authoritarian Upgrading in Cairo's Informal Neighbourhoods

Participation appeared in development discourses for the first time in the 1970s, as a generic call for the involvement of the poor in development initiatives. Over the last three decades, the initial perspectives on participation intended as a project method for poverty reduction have evolved into a coherent and articulated theoretical elaboration, in which participation figures among the paraphernalia of good governance promotion: participation has acquired the status of “new orthodoxy”. Nevertheless, the experience of the implementation of participatory approaches in development projects seemed to be in the majority of cases rather disappointing, since the transformative potential of ‘participation in development’ depends on a series of factors in which every project can actually differ from others: the ultimate aim of the approach promoted, its forms and contents and, last but not least, the socio-political context in which the participatory initiative is embedded. In Egypt, the signature of a project agreement between the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Federal Republic of Germany, in 1998, inaugurated a Participatory Urban Management Programme (PUMP) to be implemented in Greater Cairo by the German Technical Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ) and the Ministry of Planning (now Ministry of Local Development) and the Governorates of Giza and Cairo as the main counterparts. Now, ten years after the beginning of the PUMP/PDP and close to its end (December 2010), it is possible to draw some conclusions about the scope, the significance and the effects of the participatory approach adopted by GTZ and appropriated by the Egyptian counterparts in dealing with the issue of informal areas and, more generally, of urban development. Our analysis follows three sets of questions: the first set regards the way ‘participation’ has been interpreted and concretised by PUMP and PDP. The second is about the emancipating potential of the ‘participatory approach’ and its ability to ‘empower’ the ‘marginalised’. The third focuses on one hand on the efficacy of GTZ strategy to lead to an improvement of the delivery service in informal areas (especially in terms of planning and policies), and on the other hand on the potential of GTZ development intervention to trigger an incremental process of ‘democratisation’ from below.

An investigation of the emerging system of host government participation in the international oil industry with particular reference to Libyan participation arrangements

This study has been conceived with the primary objective of identifying and evaluating the financial aspects of the transformation in country/company relations of the international oil industry from the traditional concessionary system to the system of governmental participation in the ownership and operation of oil concessions. The emphasis of the inquiry was placed on assembling a case study of the oil exploitation arrangements of Libya. Through a comprehensive review of the literature, the sociopolitical factors surrounding the international oil business were identified and examined in an attempt to see their influence on contractual arrangements and particularly to gauge the impact of any induced contractual changes on the revenue benefit accruing to the host country from its oil operations. Some comparative analyses were made in the study to examine the viability of the Libyan participation deals both as an investment proposal and as a system of conducting oil activities in the country. The analysis was carried out in the light of specific hypotheses to assess the relative impact of the participation scheme in comparison with the alternative concessionary model on the net revenue resulting to the government from oil operations and the relative effect on the level of research and development within the industry. A discounted cash flow analysis was conducted to measure inputs and outputs of the comparative models and judge their revenue benefits. Then an empirical analysis was carried out to detect any significant behavioural changes in the exploration and development effort associated with the different oil exploitation systems. Results of the investigation of revenues support the argument that the mere introduction of the participation system has not resulted in a significant revenue benefit to the host government. Though there has been a significant increase in government revenue, associated with the period following the emergence of the participation agreements, this increase was mainly due to socio-economic factors other than the participation scheme. At the same time the empirical results have shown an association of the participation scheme with a decline of the oil industry's research and development efforts.

Trade, Politics, and Democratization: The 1997 Global Agreement between the European Union and Mexico

Mexico and the European Union signed a new Political and Economic Association Agreement in December 1997 and ultimately a free-trade agreement in March 2000, aiming to establish a new model of relations with a more dynamic trade and investment component. This article analyzes the 1997 agreement as background to the final accord. Economic and political changes in the 1990s modified both parties' participation in the international political economy, helping to overcome some of the structural obstacles to the relationship. The policy toward Latin America adopted by the EU in 1994 was influential. The negotiation process revealed divergences over the scope of the liberalization process and the so-called democracy clause.