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This paper puts sub-Saharan Africa’s economic development into perspective. While much did not go as hoped for at independence, much of the region has been on a more promising development trajectory since the mid-1990s, as we illustrate using growth, poverty, and human development indicators. We identify key weaknesses, including lack of structural transformation and the slow rate of employment growth. We refer to global shocks that have played a critical role in sub-Saharan Africa’s economic performance alongside domestic events, policies, and governance. Finally, we discuss a set of critical challenges requiring effective management for sub-Saharan Africa to realize its considerable development potential.
development --- poverty reduction --- China
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This volume contains peer-reviewed papers from the Fourth World Landslide Forum organized by the International Consortium on Landslides (ICL), the Global Promotion Committee of the International Programme on Landslides (IPL), University of Ljubljana (UL) and Geological Survey of Slovenia in Ljubljana, Slovenia from May 29 to June 2, 2017. The complete collection of papers from the Forum is published in five full-color volumes.
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This book examines the links between economic growth, changing employment conditions, and the reduction of poverty in Latin America in the 2000s. Our analysis answers the following broad questions: Has economic growth resulted in gains in standards of living and reductions in poverty via improved labour market conditions in Latin America in the 2000s, and have these improvements halted or been reversed since the international crisis of 2008? How do the rate and character of economic growth, changes in the various employment and earnings indicators, and changes in poverty and inequality indicators relate to each other? Our contribution is an in-depth study of the multi-pronged growth-employment-poverty nexus based on a large number of labour market indicators (twelve employment and earnings indicators and four poverty and inequality indicators) for a large number of Latin American countries (sixteen of them). The book presents a positive and hopeful set of findings for the period 2000 to 2012/13. Economic growth took place and brought about improvements in almost all labour market indicators and consequent reductions in poverty rates. But not all improvements were equal in size or caused by the same things. Some macroeconomic factors were associated with changes in labour market conditions, some of them always in the welfare-improving direction and some others always in the welfare-reducing direction. Most countries in the region suffered a deterioration in at least some labour market indicators as a consequence of the international crisis of 2008, but the negative effects were reversed very quickly in most countries.
economic growth --- employment conditions --- reduction of poverty --- latin america
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Sulfur has many redox states and is a major metabolite in suboxic and anaerobic environments including, but not restricted to, marine and marginal marine sediments, the water column of oxygen minimum zones, salt marshes and oil wells. Microbially mediated redox cycling of sulfur typically comprises dissimilatory sulfate reduction (MSR), sulfide reoxidation, disproportionation and the oxidation and reduction of sulfur redox intermediates. These processes contribute to the degradation of organic matter, link the cycles of sulfur and carbon, control the production and consumption of methane and are critical for the long term budget of O2 in the atmosphere. Microbial and abiotic processes at redox interfaces also connect the sulfur cycle to the redox cycles of nitrogen, iron and other elements, producing distinctive geochemical and molecular signatures. Studies that couple microbiology with stable isotope geochemistry have informed interpretations of microbial sulfur cycling in modern and past environments. Laboratory-based studies and models of MSR have sought to understand the physiological and environmental controls of the magnitude of sulfur isotope fractionation. The fractionations of stable sulfur and oxygen isotopes during MSR are also used to track enzymatic activity during MSR and processes that oxidize sulfide in the presence of environmental oxidants. Outstanding questions in the field concern the importance of oxidative processes within the natural environment, the delivery of oxidants and carbon sources to the zones of sulfate reduction and the ability to detect or reconstruct oxidative processes from the chemical, isotopic, metagenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomics profiles in the environment. Recent studies have emphasized the complex connections between sulfur and methane, iron, nitrogen and other elements. These links may involve the redox cycling of species that occur at concentrations difficult to detect by standard geochemical techniques or that are cycled at very rapid rates (cryptic cycles). Of particular interest is the use of isotope geochemistry to quantify links among various electron acceptors, including sulfate, ferric iron, and nitrate, during the anaerobic methane oxidation. For example, recent geochemical measurements have hinted that microbial sulfate reduction coupled to organic matter oxidation is mechanistically different to when sulfate reduction is coupled to methane oxidation. Recent studies have also suggested a possible contribution of a number of previously uncultured microbial groups in sulfur cycling in sulfidic environments, inspiring further studies of these organisms and their partnerships in anaerobic environments. This Research Topic highlights studies of microbial interactions, processes and communities that couple the sulfur cycle to the cycles of other elements in aphotic environments.
sulfur --- subsurface sulfur cycle --- issimilatory sulfate reduction (MSR)
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The objective of this work is to develop a method which solves the nonlinear elastohydrodynamic contact problem in a fast and precise way using model order reduction techniques. The reduction procedure is based on a projection onto a low-dimensional subspace using different hyper-reduction procedures. The method provides fast and highly accurate reduced order models for stationary and transient, Newtonian and Non-Newtonian EHD line and point contact problems.
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A speckle pattern is a quasi-random interference pattern which typically emerges when lasers are used as illumination sources in projection applications and which severely degrades the image quality. Since in most projection applications high speckle disturbance is not tolerable, speckle reduction is a major issue. This work gives an introduction into the theoretical description of speckle and investigates different practical methods for speckle reduction in laser projection systems.
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Engineering materials show a pronounced heterogeneity on a smaller scale that influences the macroscopic constitutive behavior. Algorithms for the periodic discretization of microstructures are presented. These are used within the Nonuniform Transformation Field Analysis (NTFA) which is an order reduction based nonlinear homogenization method with micro-mechanical background. Theoretical and numerical aspects of the method are discussed and its computational efficiency is validated.
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In this volume, world-renowned contributors, including Martin Ravallion, Michael Kremer and Robert Townsend, deal with the institutional characteristics of poverty resulting from the time pattern of aid, the nature of financial systems and the political economy of budgetary decisions. Going beyond the traditional literature on poverty, this original book deals with themes of broad interest to both scholars and policymakers in a clear yet technically sophisticated manner. Departing from conventional methods employed in poverty studies, these innovative essays enquire into the institutional characteristics of poverty, and using current case studies, they examine the crucial idea that periods of crises seriously affect poverty.
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Many developing countries—Viet Nam included—continue to struggle to raise incomes per capita. A common feature of the growth and development process is a fundamental change in the pattern of economic activity, as households reallocate labour from traditional agriculture to more productive forms of agriculture and modern industrial and service sectors. Broad structural transformation and widespread poverty reduction is the combined result of these large-scale shifts in work and labour allocation when they realize desired development goals. The roots of this book grow from when the first pilot Viet Nam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) was carried out in 2002. The success of this inspired the Central Institute of Economic Management (CIEM) in Hanoi, the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (CAP-IPSARD), the Institute of Labour Science and Social Affairs (ILSSA), and the Development Economics Research Group (DERG) of the University of Copenhagen, together with Danida and, later on, UNU-WIDER, to plan and carry out a more ambitious VARHS from 2006, increasing coverage and representativeness to more than 2,150 families and 12 provinces across the various regions of Viet Nam. The VARHS covering these very same households had, by 2014, been carried out five times, that is, every two years. It is on this high-quality panel data foundation and almost fifteen years of study and policy work using the VARHS data that the present volume builds, in its effort to bring out the essential rural microeconomic characteristics and insights of a dynamic South-East Asian economy in transition from a centrally planned towards a more market-based economy.
agriculture --- structural transformation --- development process --- household survey --- poverty reduction --- viet nam
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Igneous oceanic crust is one of the largest potential habitats for life on earth, and microbial activity supported by rock-water-microbe reactions in this environment can impact global biogeochemical cycles. However, our understanding of the microbiology of this system, especially the subsurface “deep biosphere” component of it, has traditionally been limited by sample availability and quality. Over the past decade, several major international programs (such as the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations, the current International Ocean Discovery Program and its predecessor Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, and the Deep Carbon Observatory) have focused on advancing our understanding of life in this cryptic, yet globally relevant, biosphere. Additionally, many field and laboratory research programs are examining hydrothermal vent systems –a seafloor expression of seawater that has been thermally and chemically altered in subseafloor crust – and the microbial communities supported by these mineral-rich fluids. The Frontiers in Microbiology 3 September 2017 | Recent Advances in Geomicrobiology of the Ocean Crust papers in this special issue bring together recent discoveries of microbial presence, diversity and activity in these dynamic ocean environments. Cumulatively, the articles in this special issue serve as a tribute to the late Dr. Katrina J. Edwards, who was a pioneer and profound champion of studying microbes that “rust the crust”. This special issue volume serves as a foundation for the continued exploration of the subsurface ocean crust deep biosphere.
Geomicrobiology --- deep biosphere --- IODP --- ocean crust --- iron oxidation --- sulfate reduction --- hydrothermal vents
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