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Increased Investment (increased + investment)
Selected AbstractsDoes Allocation of Public Spending Matter in Poverty Reduction?ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 4 2008Evidence from Thailand H41; H53; H54 The present paper uses a panel dataset to estimate the marginal returns to different types of government expenditure on agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction in Thailand. The study finds that additional government spending on agricultural research provides the largest return in terms of agricultural productivity and has the second largest impact on rural poverty reduction. Increased investment in rural electrification has the largest poverty reduction impact, mainly through improved nonfarm employment. Rural education has the third largest impact on both productivity and poverty reduction. Irrigation has a positive impact on agricultural productivity, but regional variation is considerable. Government spending on rural roads has no significant impact on agricultural productivity and its poverty reduction impact ranks last among all investment alternatives considered. Additional investment in the Northeast Region has a greater impact on poverty reduction than in other regions. [source] CROSS-GENERATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS AND THE EVOLUTION OF OFFSPRING SIZE IN THE TRINIDADIAN GUPPY POECILIA RETICULATAEVOLUTION, Issue 2 2006Farrah Bashey Abstract The existence of adaptive phenotypic plasticity demands that we study the evolution of reaction norms, rather than just the evolution of fixed traits. This approach requires the examination of functional relationships among traits not only in a single environment but across environments and between traits and plasticity itself. In this study, I examined the interplay of plasticity and local adaptation of offspring size in the Trinidadian guppy, Poecilia reticulata. Guppies respond to food restriction by growing and reproducing less but also by producing larger offspring. This plastic difference in offspring size is of the same order of magnitude as evolved genetic differences among populations. Larger offspring sizes are thought to have evolved as an adaptation to the competitive environment faced by newborn guppies in some environments. If plastic responses to maternal food limitation can achieve the same fitness benefit, then why has guppy offspring size evolved at all? To explore this question, I examined the plastic response to food level of females from two natural populations that experience different selective environments. My goals were to examine whether the plastic responses to food level varied between populations, test the consequences of maternal manipulation of offspring size for offspring fitness, and assess whether costs of plasticity exist that could account for the evolution of mean offspring size across populations. In each population, full-sib sisters were exposed to either a low- or high-food treatment. Females from both populations produced larger, leaner offspring in response to food limitation. However, the population that was thought to have a history of selection for larger offspring was less plastic in its investment per offspring in response to maternal mass, maternal food level, and fecundity than the population under selection for small offspring size. To test the consequences of maternal manipulation of offspring size for offspring fitness, I raised the offspring of low- and high-food mothers in either low- or high-food environments. No maternal effects were detected at high food levels, supporting the prediction that mothers should increase fecundity rather than offspring size in noncompetitive environments. For offspring raised under low food levels, maternal effects on juvenile size and male size at maturity varied significantly between populations, reflecting their initial differences in maternal manipulation of offspring size; nevertheless, in both populations, increased investment per offspring increased offspring fitness. Several correlates of plasticity in investment per offspring that could affect the evolution of offspring size in guppies were identified. Under low-food conditions, mothers from more plastic families invested more in future reproduction and less in their own soma. Similarly, offspring from more plastic families were smaller as juveniles and female offspring reproduced earlier. These correlations suggest that a fixed, high level of investment per offspring might be favored over a plastic response in a chronically low-resource environment or in an environment that selects for lower reproductive effort [source] Constraints on union organising in the United KingdomINDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 1 2008Edmund Heery ABSTRACT Despite increased investment by unions in organising, across much of the developed world there is at best modest evidence of a recovery of union membership. This has led to a research interest in the barriers to successful union organising and it is with this critical issue that the following article is concerned. It uses survey and interview data from trainee organisers in Britain to identify the internal and external constraints they have encountered while working on organising campaigns. The findings point to a broad range of organising constraints both within and beyond trade unions. Experience of constraints varies and is shown partly to be a function of the characteristics of organisers, the nature of the organising task in which they are engaged and the systems in place to manage their work. [source] Mapping capacity in the health sector: a conceptual frameworkINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2002Anne K. LaFond Abstract Capacity improvement has become central to strategies used to develop health systems in low-income countries. Experience suggests that achieving better health outcomes requires both increased investment (i.e. financial resources) and adequate local capacity to use resources effectively. International donors and non-governmental agencies, as well as ministries of health, are therefore increasingly relying on capacity building to enhance overall performance in the health sector. Despite the growing interest in capacity improvement, there has been little consensus among practitioners and academics on definitions of ,capacity building' and how to evaluate it. This paper aims to review current knowledge and experiences from ongoing efforts to monitor and evaluate capacity building interventions in the health sector in developing countries. It draws on a wide range of sources to develop (1) a definition of capacity building and (2) a conceptual framework for mapping capacity and measuring the effects of capacity building interventions. Mapping is the initial step in the design of capacity building interventions and provides a framework for monitoring and evaluating their effectiveness. Capacity mapping is useful to planners because it makes explicit the assumptions underlying the relationship between capacity and health system performance and provides a framework for testing those assumptions. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] An interdisciplinary evaluation of fishery production systems off the state of Pará in North BrazilJOURNAL OF APPLIED ICHTHYOLOGY, Issue 3 2009V. J. Isaac Summary The performance of 20 fishery production systems off the state of Pará in the northern region of Brazil was compared using the ,RAPFISH' methodology, with 57 identified attributes distributed among five evaluation fields: economics, sociology, ecology, technology and politics. The results indicated the existence of three large groups of fishery sectors: (i) industrial (red snapper with traps, the Laulao catfish, shrimp trawl) and semi-industrial (lobster) fisheries; (ii) large-scale artisanal fisheries (acoupa weakfish, red snapper with lines, king mackerel, Spanish mackerel, coco sea catfish); and (iii) small-scale artisanal fisheries (shellfish, crab, estuarine longline, fish traps, etc.). While the industrial and large-scale artisanal systems demonstrated greater sustainability from an economic and social standpoint, small-scale fisheries appeared to be more ecologically sustainable. Based on the results, a reduction in industrial fishing efforts is recommended, along with the establishment of licensing quotas for fishing vessels, as well as an increased investment in research on proper guidance and management of the semi-industrial and large-scale artisanal fisheries sectors. For small-scale artisanal fisheries, economic incentives are suggested for the aggregate value of the products and to assist fishers in the development of an appropriate social organization. Finally, it is believed that a greater stakeholder involvement in the decision-making process would improve management actions for all modalities. [source] Reproductive investment in relation to survival risk in a livebearing fishJOURNAL OF FISH BIOLOGY, Issue 2003K. Lindström Animals are expected to change their allocation of resources into offspring depending on their future survival probabilities. Under environmental conditions where survival probabilities are low, we expect to see an increased investment in current reproduction. Fish show an exceptionally wide range of reproductive modes, including systems where parents can be expected to have extensive control of investment in their offspring. In the least killifish, Heterandria formosa, a small livebearing fish, fertilization is internal and females extensively provision developing embryos. Hence females are likely to have control over parturition time and size of their offspring. Our expectation was that under predator threat females should produce offspring at a higher rate than in control situations. Females were given visual and chemical exposure to mosquito fish and sunfish predators. The time until the birth of the first brood was longer in the presence of predators than in the control. However, subsequent birth intervals showed the opposite pattern. In the presence of predators ensuing brood intervals were shorter than in the control treatment. The effect of mosquito fish and sunfish was similar. Despite the decrease in pregnancy interval, newborn offspring were still larger in the presence of sunfish. Our results suggest that the initial response of refraining from reproduction later changes to an increased reproductive output. This increase, however, did not manifest itself as a quality vs. number trade-off as offspring were also bigger in the sunfish treatment. This suggests that reproductive investment increases in the presence of predators and this may represent terminal investment. [source] MANAGING COMPETITION IN CITY SERVICES: THE CASE OF BARCELONAJOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 5 2009GERMŔ BEL ABSTRACT:,"Clean and safe" strategies are part of urban regeneration in the entrepreneurial city. These strategies are often characterized by privatization and public,private partnerships that enhance investment and create a city space more amenable to tourists and consumers. While such approaches promote increased investment, and differentiate services by district, they raise challenges of competition, cost escalation, and public participation. Barcelona's solid waste management strategy is presented to show the importance of a strong public coordination role when using competition to promote technological innovation and improved quality in city service delivery. [source] Hydraulic responses to height growth in maritime pine treesPLANT CELL & ENVIRONMENT, Issue 9 2004S. DELZON ABSTRACT As trees grow taller, decreased xylem path conductance imposes a major constraint on plant water and carbon balance, and is thus a key factor underlying forest productivity decline with age. The responses of stomatal conductance, leaf area: sapwood area ratio (AL : AS) and soil,leaf water potential gradient (,,S,L) to height growth were investigated in maritime pine trees. Extensive measurements of in situ sap flow, stomatal conductance and (non-gravitational) needle water potential (L = ,L , ,wgh) were made during 2 years in a chronosequence of four even-aged stands, under both wet and dry soil conditions. Under wet soil conditions, L was systematically lower in taller trees on account of differences in gravitational potential. In contrast, under dry soil conditions, our measurements clearly showed that L was maintained above a minimum threshold value of ,2.0 MPa independently of tree height, thus limiting the range of compensatory change in ,,S,L. Although a decrease in the AL : AS ratio occurred with tree height, this compensation was not sufficient to prevent a decline in leaf-specific hydraulic conductance, KL (50% lower in 30 m trees than in 10 m trees). An associated decline in stomatal conductance with tree height thus occurred to maintain a balance between water supply and demand. Both the increased investment in non-productive versus productive tissues (AS : AL) and stomatal closure may have contributed to the observed decrease in tree growth efficiency with increasing tree height (by a factor of three from smallest to tallest trees), although other growth-limiting responses (e.g. soil nutrient sequestration, increased respiratory costs) cannot be excluded. [source] Space UK: the case for both human and robotic explorationASTRONOMY & GEOPHYSICS, Issue 1 2010Article first published online: 14 JAN 2010 In December the British National Space Centre released the results of its Space Exploration Review, which makes the case for increased investment in space as a driver for scientific, technological and societal benefit. [source] The Role of Private Equity in Life SciencesJOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 2 2010Jeff Greene In a roundtable published in this journal a year ago, there was a clear consensus that the R&D function in big pharma was inefficient and in need of major restructuring, possibly through increased investments by venture capital and private equity firms. In this discussion, an accomplished group of industry practitioners begins by looking at the prospects for both venture capital and private equity to play meaningful roles in financing early- and mid-stage drug development. In so doing, they explore questions like the following: , Are there ways for big pharma and biotech to reduce "science risk" and make R&D funding more profitable and attractive to venture capital and private equity,and perhaps even hedge funds? , What roles do you see for specialty PE firms like Symphony Capital and Paul Capital, which are now bundling mid-stage development assets and securitizing royalties? Then the panelists turn to the broader life sciences industry and consider the outlook for leveraged private equity transactions involving marketed products, late-stage development, and services. Here they consider issues like the following: , Will PE be attracted to less-R&D-intensive activities like medtech and generics? , Have the recent consolidation through mergers and reorganization of big pharma into decentralized business units created opportunities for carve-outs of certain businesses? For big pharma and life sciences companies in general, the answers to such questions point to greater specialization and focus achieved partly through strategic alliances with venture capital, private equity, and even hedge funds, and involving marketed products and services as well as early-stage drug development. [source] | ||||||||||||||||