Avaliação de sustentabilidade ambiental do sistema de abastecimento de água e esgotamento sanitário de Uberaba - MG

This paper analyses the sustainability under the environmental (ecological) perspective of Water Supply and Sanitary Sewers Systems from Uberaba city, MG. It was accomplished in this analysis, An Environmental Sustainability Assessment of those systems, by the means of specific sustainability indicators proposed for Uberaba, but which may be used for other simi-lar cities. To the characterization of the systems, visitations were made to the main units as well as a documental was elaborated. The definition of the level or stage of the sustainability by the indicators was made based on a literature review, on interviews with the technicians and managers of the systems and based on the characterization and observation of the system reality, being attributed to them the following classification: Non Sustainable, Low Sustaina-bility, Medium Sustainability and High Sustainability. It was verified that the indicators that have lower compatibility to the process of sustainability to the studied systems are those rela-ted to the water physical losses, to the water per capita consumption, to the electricity con-sumption and to the sludge from the water treatment plants disposal untreated into a water body, for the Water Supply System. And those ones related to the attendance with sewage treatment, to the electricity consumption and to the usage of the treated sewage, for the Sani-tary Sewers, all of them classified as Non Sustainable.

Weighted nucleoli and dually essential coalitions

We consider linearly weighted versions of the least core and the (pre)nucleolus and investigate the reduction possibilities in their computation. We slightly extend some well-known related results and establish their counterparts by using the dual game. Our main results imply, for example, that if the core of the game is not empty, all dually inessential coalitions (which can be weakly minorized by a partition in the dual game) can be ignored when we compute the per-capita least core and the per-capita (pre)nucleolus from the dual game. This could lead to the design of polynomial time algorithms for the per-capita (and other monotone nondecreasingly weighted versions of the) least core and the (pre)nucleolus in specific classes of balanced games with polynomial many dually esential coalitions.

Public-Private Partnership Design for Inclusive Cocoa Global Value Chains in Ghana

Within 10 years, there could be a severe global shortage in the supply of cocoa, according to industry practitioners and other experts. Due to global population growth and the emergence of a growing global middle class, by 2025 the cocoa crop would need to increase by nearly 50 per cent to keep up with projected demand. A potential shortage of supply is a direct threat to the business model of lead firms – including cocoa grinders and processors, chocolate confectioners, and retail distributors. But these international firms – the ones that will suffer the most if there is a shortage of cocoa supply – are helping create the market failure that is stifling sustainability. Functioning as a two-tiered consolidated oligopoly with a combined market share of approximately 89%, these firms enjoy the largest portion of value capture in the cocoa-chocolate global value chain (GVC). The smallholder cocoa producers, conversely, are trapped in low value-add segments of the GVC. In fact, most smallholder farmers survive on less than $1.00 per day per capita, on average in many cocoa exporting countries. In Ghana - the second largest producer of cocoa in the world - the government has accomplished little to help these smallholders upgrade and make cocoa an attractive sector for the next generation to inherit. The result – both in Ghana and around the world – is a lack of sustainability of the supply of cocoa. Demand is already beginning to outstrip supply. As a result of these underlying circumstances, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has posed the following policy question: "Under what conditions could USAID, as a development agency, support and enhance potential public-private partnerships in order to improve the bargaining power (and financial wherewithal) of smallholder organizations and farmers in the context of the global value chain for cocoa in Ghana?"

Les politiques de revenu minimum dans les provinces canadiennes : une étude comparée de l’aide sociale au Canada

L’objectif de ce mémoire est d’identifier les déterminants de la générosité de l’aide sociale au Canada. Plus précisément, quels sont les facteurs qui expliquent les variations entre les montants d’aide sociale entre les provinces canadiennes de 1990 à 2009? Pourquoi le Québec, la Saskatchewan et Terre-Neuve-Labrador sont plus généreux que le Nouveau-Brunswick et l’Alberta? L’analyse de ces 10 politiques distinctes est produite à partir d’un cadre théorique quadripartite qui inclut le rôle des acteurs (partis politiques et syndicats), les traits institutionnels (dépenses publiques et engagement à la redistribution), les contraintes budgétaires (taux d’assistance sociale, dette, économie) et le rôle du gouvernement fédéral (montant et type de transfert). Les résultats démontrent que l’aide sociale est une politique hautement dépendante au sentier et incrémentale. Des transferts fédéraux à coût partagé et un taux de syndicalisation élevé sont des facteurs qui exercent une influence positive sur la générosité des provinces. À l’inverse, les partis de droite ainsi qu’une situation budgétaire difficile ont un impact négatif. Il faut noter que la richesse économique des provinces n’est pas associée à une plus grande générosité de l’aide sociale, au contraire les prestations d’aide sociale étaient plus faibles en 2009 qu’en 1990 malgré un PIB qui a presque doublé. De plus, des provinces riches comme l’Alberta et la Colombie-Britannique sont peu généreuses. Finalement, il faut noter que les partis politiques de gauche n’ont pas l’effet positif escompté sur la générosité des politiques de revenu minimum.

The effects of the non-native invertebrate predator Bythotrephes longimanus and declining aqueous calcium on crustacean zooplankton communities in Canadian Shield lakes

Over the last several decades, human activities have resulted in environmental changes that have increased the number of stressors that can act on a single environment. In Canadian Shield lakes, two recent stressors, the invasion of Bythotrephes longimanus and calcium decline, have been documented. Widespread acidification of hundreds of North American lakes has resulted in the precipitous decline of lake water calcium concentration. Crustacean zooplankton with high calcium demands are likely to be vulnerable to calcium decline, especially <1.5 mg Ca/L, where survival and reproduction rates are reduced. These taxa are also vulnerable to predation by Bythotrephes that has been implicated in the loss of pelagic biodiversity in soft water lakes. Despite laboratory and field studies aimed at understanding the independent impact of these stressors, it is unclear how their co-occurrence will influence community response. Using a combination of data from a large regional lake survey and field experiments, I examined the individual and joint effects of Bythotrephes and calcium decline on native zooplankton community structure. Results demonstrated that much is known about Bythotrephes and our findings of reduced total zooplankton and species richness, due to the loss of Cladocera, are consistent with field surveys and other experimental studies. While we did not detect strong evidence for an effect of calcium on zooplankton using the lowest calcium concentration among invaded lakes (1.2 mg Ca/L), there is evidence that, as lake water calcium concentrations fall <1 mg Ca/L, per capita growth rates of a broad variety of taxa are expected to decline. At the regional scale, negative effects of Bythotrephes and calcium on abundances of small cladocerans and Daphnia pulicaria, respectively, were in agreement with my experimental observations. We also observed significant interactions between Bythotrephes and calcium for a broad variety of taxa. As Bythotrephes continues to spread and invade lakes that are also declining in aqueous calcium, both stressors are likely to amplify negative effects on Cladocera that appear the most vulnerable. Loss of these important zooplankton in response to both Bythotrephes and calcium decline, is likely to lower zooplankton productivity, with potential effects on phytoplankton and higher trophic levels.

Brazilian Social Segurity and Social Work: reflections on the Continuous Cash Benefit Programme

Guaranteed under the Federal Constitution of 1988, Brazilian social security covers rights relating to health, social welfare and social care. The Continuous Cash Benefit Programme (BPC) was approved as part of social care policy and is regulated under the Social Care Act (Ley Orgánica de Asistencia Social) of 1993. This benefit guarantees a minimum monthly income for persons with disabilities and for older adults. Certain requirements must be satisfied in order to obtain the assistance: medical and social assessment of disabled persons, a minimum age of 65 years for older adults, and, in both cases, the value of per capita income for the nuclear family in question, which must be lower than a quarter of the minimum wage. Regulation of the BPC has incorporated advances and setbacks in terms of legislation and implementation. In this framework, this article presents a theoretical reflection, an analysis of the legislation on the matter, and some reflections on the challenges that it poses for social workers.

Women of an uncertain age: quantifying human capital accumulation in rural Ireland in the nineteenth century

Geary and Stark find that Ireland’s post-Famine per capita GDP converged with British levels, and that this convergence was largely due to total factor productivity growth rather than mass emigration. In this article, new long-run measurements of human capital accumulation in Ireland are devised in order to facilitate a better assessment of sources of this productivity growth, including the relative contribution of men and women. This is done by exploiting the frequency at which age data heap at round ages, widely interpreted as an indicator of a population’s basic numeracy skills. Because Földvári, van Leeuwen, and van Leeuwen-Li find that gender-specific trends in this measure derived from census returns are biased by who is reporting and recording the age information, any computed numeracy trends are corrected using data from prison and workhouse registers, sources in which women ostensibly self-reported their age. The findings show that rural Irish women born early in the nineteenth century had substantially lower levels of human capital than uncorrected census data would otherwise suggest. These results are large in magnitude and thus economically significant. The speed at which women converged is consistent with Geary and Stark’s interpretation of Irish economic history; Ireland probably graduated to Europe’s club of advanced economies thanks in part to rapid advances in female human capital.

Energy efficiency in the Chinese provinces: a fixed effects stochastic frontier spatial Durbin error panel analysis

Energy efficiency improvement has been a key objective of China’s long-term energy policy. In this paper, we derive single-factor technical energy efficiency (abbreviated as energy efficiency) in China from multi-factor efficiency estimated by means of a translog production function and a stochastic frontier model on the basis of panel data on 29 Chinese provinces over the period 2003–2011. We find that average energy efficiency has been increasing over the research period and that the provinces with the highest energy efficiency are at the east coast and the ones with the lowest in the west, with an intermediate corridor in between. In the analysis of the determinants of energy efficiency by means of a spatial Durbin error model both factors in the own province and in first-order neighboring provinces are considered. Per capita income in the own province has a positive effect. Furthermore, foreign direct investment and population density in the own province and in neighboring provinces have positive effects, whereas the share of state-owned enterprises in Gross Provincial Product in the own province and in neighboring provinces has negative effects. From the analysis it follows that inflow of foreign direct investment and reform of state-owned enterprises are important policy handles.

British economic growth 1270-1870

This is a definitive new account of Britain's economic evolution from a backwater of Europe in 1270 to the hub of the global economy in 1870. For the first time Britain's national accounts are reconstructed right back into the thirteenth century to show what really happened quantitatively during the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution. Contrary to traditional views of the earlier period as one of Malthusian stagnation, they reveal how the transition to modern economic growth built on the earlier foundations of a persistent upward trend in GDP per capita which doubled between 1270 and 1700. Featuring comprehensive estimates of population, land use, agricultural production, industrial and service-sector production and GDP per capita, as well as analysis of their implications, this is an essential reference work for those interest in British economic history and the origins of modern economic growth more generally.

National incomes and economic growth in pre-industrial Europe: insights from recent research

Pessimistic Malthusian verdicts on the capacity of pre-industrial European economies to sustain a degree of real economic growth under conditions of population growth are challenged using current reconstructions of urbanisation ratios, the real wage rates of building and agricultural labourers, and GDP per capita estimated by a range of methods. Economic growth is shown to have outpaced population growth and raised GDP per capita to in excess of $1,500 (1990 $ international at PPP) in Italy during its twelfth- and thirteenth-century commercial revolution, Holland during its fifteenth- and sixteenth-century golden age, and England during the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century runup to its industrial revolution. During each of these Smithian growth episodes expanding trade and commerce sustained significant output and employment growth in the manufacturing and service sectors. These positive developments were not necessarily reflected by trends in real wage rates for the latter were powerfully influenced by associated changes in relative factor prices and the per capita supply of labour as workers varied the length of the working year in order to consume either more leisure or more goods. The scale of the divergence between trends in real wage rates and GDP per capita nevertheless varied a great deal between countries for reasons which have yet to be adequately explained.

Alcohol-Related Problems in Eastern Europe : A Comparative Perspective

This thesis investigates the association between alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harm in Eastern Europe. The main aim was to estimate to what extent changes in per capita alcohol consumption have an impact on different forms of alcohol-related mortality, and to put the results in an international comparative perspective. The thesis includes four papers; the first two papers use aggregate time-series analysis to assess how changes in per capita consumption affect rates in suicide mortality and fatal non-intentional injuries in several Eastern European countries, respectively. The third paper applies the same methodological approach to analyse the population-level relationship between alcohol and homicide in Russia and the U.S.. The fourth paper employs survey data to assess how the risk of experiencing alcohol-related problems in relation to volume of consumption in the Baltic countries compares to Sweden and Italy. The results of the first three papers suggests: (i) that changes in per capita consumption are significantly related to changes in mortality rates of suicide, non-intentional injuries and homicide in the countries under study; (ii) that the relationship is stronger for men than for women, and (iii) that the relationship tends to be stronger in the countries with more detrimental drinking patterns, e.g. Russia. The results of the fourth paper suggest that the risk of experiencing alcohol-related problems in relation to level of drinking in the Baltic countries is similar to the corresponding risk in Sweden, but considerably stronger than in Italy. In conclusion, the findings support the significance of a public health approach to alcohol-related problems in Eastern Europe, i.e., policy measures directed towards total alcohol consumption. In addition, strategies aimed at reducing the occurrence of binge drinking seem to have great potential for reducing alcohol-related harm and mortality in Eastern European countries.

Mortalidade por câncer de boca e condição sócio-econômica no Brasil

Chronic non-communicable diseases represent a major public health problem, requiring more effective investigation and control by government agencies. The aim of this study was to correlate the mortality rate for oral cancer in Brazilian State capitals from 1998 to 2002 with socioeconomic factors collected in the 2000 census, using an ecological study design. Data were obtained from the Mortality Information System from 1998 to 2002. Social factors were taken from the Brazilian Human Development Atlases. After data collection, statistical analysis was performed using Pearson's correlation index. The findings included positive and significant correlations among the socioeconomic indicators (Municipal Human Development Index - MHDI, MHDI-income, MHDI-education, MHDI-life expectancy, and per capita income), and negative and significant correlations with the socioeconomic indicators Gini Index and infant mortality. Despite the study’s limitations and probable underreporting in less developed State capitals, the study found significant statistic correlations between the selected socioeconomic indicators and the oral cancer mortality rate___________________________RESUMO As doenças crônico-degenerativas representam um grande problema de saúde pública, necessitando de levantamento e controle mais efetivos destas enfermidades por parte dos órgãos públicos. O objetivo deste estudo foi correlacionar os índices de mortalidade por câncer oral nas capitais do Brasil no período de 1998 a 2002 com indicadores sócio-econômicos do Censo Demográfico de 2000 , por meio de um estudo do tipo ecológico. Os dados foram extraídos do Sistema de Informação de Mortalidade (Ministério da Saúde/DATASUS), para os anos de 1998-2002. Os indicadores sócio-econômicos foram obtidos a partir do Atlas do Desenvolvimento Humano no Brasil. Após coleta dos dados, a análise estatística foi realizada usando-se o índice de correlação de Pearson. Observaram-se corre- lações positivas e significativas entre os indicadores sócio-econômicos (Índice de Desenvolvimento HumanoMunicipal – IDH-M, IDH-M renda, IDH-M educação, IDH-M longevidade e renda per capita), e correlação negativa e significante para os indicadores sócio-econômicos índice de Gini e mortalidade infantil. Apesar das limitações do estudo e da provável problemática de sub-registros nas capitais menos desenvolvidas, o presente trabalho encontrou correlações estatisticamente significantes entre os indicadores sócio-econômicos selecionados e o índice de mortalidade por câncer oral

Local Seafood Availability in San Diego, California Seafood Markets

Like many developed coastal cities, San Diego, California has strong geographic and recreational ties to the adjacent ocean, but weak culinary ones. Less than 10% of the seafood consumed in the U.S., and San Diego in particular, is domestic. The popularity and abundance of farmers’ markets and other local markets in San Diego indicates an interest among producers and the public alike in cultivating local, diverse food systems, but this trend has been slower to catch on for seafood. The goal of this project was, therefore, to define and begin to understand the influences on the patterns of locally sourced, domestic seafood availability in San Diego. This study focused on seafood availability in seafood markets including researching market websites and contacting seafood counter managers to determine the general frequency (consistent, occasional, none) at which the markets sold seafood produced by San Diego fishermen or aquafarmers. Seafood market locations were mapped, and demographic and spatial information was gathered for each market’s zip code. The results of the study revealed that only 8% of San Diego’s 86 seafood markets consistently carried San Diego-sourced seafood, and 14% of markets carried it on occasion. Increased density of these local seafood markets was correlated with proximity to the coast, with almost 80% of the markets located within 2 km of the coast. Neither per capita income nor racial diversity was correlated with local seafood market density, indicating that factors contributing to coastal isolation matter more than wealth or diversity in determining where local seafood is sold. The geographic disparity in local seafood availability may be due to a variety of factors, including a small fishing fleet, prevalence of imported seafood, limited waterfront and urban infrastructure needed to support a local seafood system, and a lack of public awareness about local fisheries. Information gleaned from this study can inform further investigation into the influences on local, equitable seafood systems, as well as help consumers, producers and marketers to make informed decisions about seafood purchases and marketing efforts.

Evaluating the efficiency of community-based HIV testing and counseling strategies in sub-Saharan Africa

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

A Corrupção burocrática inibe o empreendedorismo? uma análise empírica dos estados brasileiros

This work aims to investigate the relationship between the entrepreneurship and the incidence of bureaucratic corruption in the states of Brazil and Federal District. The main hypothesis of this study is that the opening of a business in Brazilian states is negatively affected by the incidence of corruption. The theoretical reference is divided into Entrepreneurship and bureaucratic corruption, with an emphasis on materialistic perspective (objectivist) of entrepreneurship and the effects of bureaucratic corruption on entrepreneurial activity. By the regression method with panel data, we estimated the models with pooled data and fixed and random effects. To measure corruption, I used the General Index of Corruption for the Brazilian states (BOLL, 2010), and to represent entrepreneurship, firm entry per capita by state. Tests (Chow, Hausman and Breusch-Pagan) indicate that the random effects model is more appropriate, and the preliminary results indicate a positive impact of bureaucratic corruption on entrepreneurial activity, contradicting the hypothesis expected and found in previous articles to Brazil, and corroborating the proposition of Dreher and Gassebner (2011) that, in countries with high regulation, bureaucratic corruption can be grease in the wheels of entrepreneurship