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Population and high-risk based approaches to reducing the burden of cardiovascular disease in low- and middle-income countries
No full textCardiovascular diseases (CVD) are a major global health problem, with rising prevalence due to aging populations and improved survival rates. Preventive measures like lifestyle changes and medications are key. Two strategies to reduce CVD risk are population-based approaches for entire populations and high-risk approaches for individuals. However, the high-risk approach is challenging in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) due to limited resources. Non-laboratory-based CVD risk prediction tools could help, though their effectiveness is not well understood. A combined approach considering local sociodemographic and environmental contexts may most effectively reduce CVD in LMICs.
The thesis aims to compare the performance of non-laboratory-based and laboratory-based equations across different settings and populations. Additionally, it aims to quantify the disparities in CVD risk among disadvantaged groups by identifying variations and social determinants across different settings. The thesis consists of two systematic reviews to compare non-laboratory-based and laboratory-based CVD equations, and four empirical studies to identify the most susceptible groups for CVD risk.
Systematic reviews included studies published until March 12, 2024, with 25 studies on the correlation and agreement between laboratory- and non-laboratory-based equations and nine studies on their prediction performance. The results show strong correlations and moderate agreement between laboratory- and non-laboratory-based equations, with substantial hazard ratios for additional predictors significantly altering predicted risk, particularly for individuals with higher or lower levels of these predictors compared to the average.
For empirical studies, data from the WHO STEPS national survey in Ethiopia, Brunei Darussalam, Iraq, Nepal, Afghanistan, Jordan, Mongolia, and Sao Tome and Principe include sociodemographic factors, behavioural factors (tobacco and alcohol use, physical inactivity), and biological risk factors (blood pressure, blood glucose, and cholesterol). These data are linked to 30 years (1970-2000) of district-level climate history, with multivariable multilevel regression models and geospatial analysis used to identify individual- and community-level factors associated with ten-year CVD risk. Ten-year CVD risk is significantly higher among study participants who are widowed, divorced, or separated, reside in urban areas, have lower educational status, are retired or unable to work, engage in low physical activity, and live in communities with higher water vapor pressure climates. Conversely, lower ten-year CVD risks were associated with communities in inherently hotter climates. Hotspot areas for mean ten-year CVD risk were observed across various regions of Ethiopia, rather than being limited to a specific area. In addition to these hotspots, regions with higher annual water vapor pressure (humidity) were linked to higher ten-year CVD risk, offering insights for targeted CVD prevention strategies in more humid regions.
The findings of this thesis indicate the validity of affordable and feasible CVD risk equations made for resource-limited settings, alongside the possible integration of non-laboratory-based methods within their healthcare systems. Moreover, the thesis identifies vulnerable groups susceptible to CVD risk disparities, including sociodemographic, behavioural, geographical, and environmental factors, and informs targeted prevention strategie
Modern Economic Statecraft
No full textThis thesis investigates economic statecraft in an era of historically high levels of global interconnectedness. Over the last century, globalisation and technological progress have deepened economic links between states and accelerated the spread of complex forms of international economic activity (like global supply chains). These developments have expanded the range of economic statecraft techniques and made evaluation of their effects more difficult. Economic theories that describe how economic statecraft affects economic activity are needed in combination with insights from other disciplines to understand modern economic statecraft. I respond to a scarcity of such approaches by contributing a modern framework for investigating economic statecraft. This research introduces a Modern Economic Statecraft (MES) framework - an interdisciplinary approach that integrates economic principles, international relations theory, and network analysis, to comprehensively evaluate the effects of states' use of economic statecraft.
The MES framework reconceptualises economic statecraft by examining global resource flows - goods, services, people, money, information, and ideas - as a means of shaping the geopolitical environment in a contested international system. I categorise techniques as either expanding (carrots) or reducing (sticks) global resource flows, with economic and geopolitical implications. I develop two topical case studies to evaluate the MES framework: economic statecraft attempts by China and Taiwan to gain or maintain diplomatic partners and United States' (US) economic statecraft involving advanced semiconductor supply chains amid strategic competition with China.
The first case study investigates Paraguay, an outlier as one of Taiwan's few remaining diplomatic partners. By incorporating the roles of China, Taiwan, and the US as origin states of economic statecraft according to the MES framework, the study demonstrates how complementary techniques - including market access, foreign aid, and military support - sustain Paraguay's alignment with Taiwan. The investigation highlights the interplay of historical, economic, and political factors that underpin the Paraguayan government's diplomatic choice.
The second case study examines US economic statecraft involving advanced semiconductor supply chains, a critical arena in strategic competition between China and the US. Using the MES framework, I evaluate how techniques such as export controls and domestic production incentives reshape global technology ecosystems and influence the distribution of military power. I reveal that while US measures have delayed China's technological progress and imposed costs in the short term, they may accelerate China's pursuit of self-reliance over time, with long-term implications for global economic stability and US influence.
Key contributions of this thesis include: a redefinition of economic statecraft to reflect its economic and political dimensions, the development of a robust theoretical framework for investigating the effects of economic statecraft techniques, and the generation of empirical evidence through contemporary case studies. The findings underscore the importance of adaptability, international coordination, and complementary policies in the effective use of modern economic statecraft.
For policymakers, the research offers practical insights into leveraging economic statecraft techniques to achieve geopolitical goals in an era of heightened interdependence and strategic competition. Through its theoretical and empirical advancements, this thesis bridges gaps in the existing literature and provides a robust interdisciplinary approach to understanding modern economic statecraft in diverse, high-stakes, and complex settings
Export agriculture and rural poverty: Evidence from Indonesian palm oil
No full textThis paper measures the impacts of Indonesia’s palm oil export expansion on district poverty and household expenditure from 2002 to 2015. Identification exploits geographic variation in agro-climatic suitability in a long difference instrumental variable framework. The main result is that a 10 percentage point increase in district area under cultivation for oil palm corresponds to around six percentage points faster poverty reduction and nine percent faster expenditure growth. The expenditure gains are principally explained by rising returns to agricultural labor. I find no evidence of labor reallocation across sectors: new farmland absorbed labor saved from palm adoption. The expansion increased local government revenues, spending and public goods, while increasing deforestation, forest fires, certain health problems and conflict. Indonesian palm oil thus provides a striking modern illustration of some of the trade-offs inherent in large changes in trade and land use.Peer-reviewe
Book Review: Be Water: Collective Improvisation in Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Protests, by Ming-sho Ho
No full textNot peer-reviewe
Colonial grids, exhausted bodies: Humanitarian energy's politics and temporal entanglements
No full textHumanitarian crises reverberate globally, impacting basic yet essential infrastructures that sustain lives, especially energy infrastructures. This is true in Lebanon, where decades of conflict, refugee influxes, and corrupt government have exacerbated a state of prolonged polycrisis. Such conditions have led to unreliable, costly, and dysfunctional energy infrastructures that have stifled access to electricity and fuel across the country. Drawing upon a multisited ethnography of aid workers' adaptations to overlapping crises, this article centres empirical data on the experiences of humanitarians in Lebanon as they navigate, make sense of, and feel the effects of energy deprivation. Data are analysed using insights from science and technology studies (STS), particularly postcolonial technoscience's attention to colonial entanglements with material infrastructures and bodies. In combining these perspectives, our article advances two claims about humanitarian energy. First, material energy infrastructures, which are required for everyday humanitarian action, are intrinsically political. They are used as political weapons in longstanding settler colonial contestations and are tied to ongoing postcolonial power formations, political dysfunction, and donor dependency. Second, these infrastructures are experienced in the present through embodied reactions like heat and fatigue and affective orientations like hope and hopelessness. Our findings reveal humanitarian energy's “postcolonial entanglements,” signalling formative temporal connections between pasts, presents, and futures. This paper therefore marks an empirical and theoretical contribution to humanitarian energy studies. It demonstrates how STS illuminates postcolonial, temporal, and embodied dimensions of energy crisis, while offering empirical insights into humanitarian actors' experiences of energy deprivation.Peer-reviewe
Internationalisation versus Securitisation: Nation-building through Higher Education in post-Soviet Uzbekistan
No full textThis book analyses how security concerns dominated international engagement in higher education reforms in post-Soviet Uzbekistan. Internationalisation of higher education – which entails recruitment of international students and staff, development of joint programs and branch campuses, and other research and education partnerships – has become an indispensable part of higher education worldwide. While most post-Soviet states liberalised their higher education systems shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan chose a peculiar way of developing a national tertiary education system. The authoritarian regime’s politics of ideological compliance during the period of 1991–2016 supplanted the genuine functions of higher education institutions as places of education and research. As a result, Uzbekistan’s higher education system remained largely isolated, although there was a strong demand for alternative, international providers of higher education. The book explains why there was such a cautious approach to internationalisation of the university system in Uzbekistan under President Islam Karimov and how it was implemented. This book will appeal to scholars, historians and political scientists and researchers of Central Asian studies, as well as readers interested in the legacy of post-Soviet governance.Peer-reviewe
Addressing Gender Inequity in Australian Sports Leadership: A Postfeminist Policy Paradox
No full textDespite the growth in women's sport, decision-making positions in sports organizations remain dominated by men. This paper examines efforts to improve gender balance in roles of leadership using two Australian governing bodies as case studies. To understand how organizations address gender disparities in leadership and high-performance coaching roles, we analyze public-facing strategies and data collected through interviews with participants working in these organizations. Our findings capture how plans and practices tend to frame gender inequity as an individual problem rather than as an institutional or structural one, reflecting core features that scholars explain as postfeminist. Specifically, initiatives primarily focus on enhancing the skills and professional experience of individual women rather than addressing institutional structures that perpetuate gendered forms of inequality. Accordingly, we argue, a policy paradox emerges in that gender equity initiatives can enshrine practices and values that prevent the realization of gender equity, because they direct attention away from institutional issues that contribute to and maintain gendered hierarchies. We conclude by reflecting on how these observations reveal a regulatory pathology, which presents additional challenges for redressing these inequities in sports organizations.Peer-reviewe
Control Theory Oriented Analysis and Design of Optimisation Algorithms
No full textThe thesis focuses on the application of control theory to the design and analysis of optimization algorithms, with a focus on first-order gradient-based methods using constant step sizes. Classical techniques from control theory, including the circle criterion, gain margin optimization, and the internal model principle, are employed to establish global convergence guarantees, identify fundamental performance limits, and develop algorithms that attain these limits.
We begin by developing a gradient-based algorithm for a class of nonconvex functions. The algorithm has a structure similar to the heavy ball, triple momentum, and accelerated gradient methods. The global convergence of the proposed algorithm is established using the circle criterion for a class of cost functions with sector-bounded gradients. The proposed algorithm is designed to have the best possible R-convergence rate among all algorithms whose global convergence can be established using the circle criterion.
The analysis is then extended to online optimization problems. We design an algorithm for solving a class of nonconvex optimization problems with a linearly varying optimal point. The algorithm is represented as a Lur'e-type nonlinear system containing a discrete time double integrator, which ensures tracking with an linearly varying optimal point with zero steady-state error. By using the circle criterion, the global convergence of the algorithm is secured. The algorithm is applied to a time-of-arrival-based localization problem with constant velocity, where it achieves zero steady-state error.
We then design an online optimization algorithm with integral action for quadratic cost functions and linearly varying optimal points. Using results from the optimal gain margin problem, we construct an algorithm that attains the best possible convergence rate among discrete time double integrator methods applied to finite dimensional quadratic problems.
Finally, we address the general case where the optimal point varies according to an th order polynomial in time. By applying internal model principle, we show that an th order integrator is necessary for exact tracking. Using optimal gain margin results, we construct algorithms that achieve the fundamental convergence rate limit of , where is the condition number of the cost function. This result establishes a fundamental convergence rate bound for all linear first order algorithms exact tracking polynomially varying optimal point.
Overall, the thesis provides control-theoretic interpretations for designing, analyzing, and optimizing first-order algorithms with constant step size
Are there biometric solutions for Papua New Guinea’s electoral roll problems?
No full textPapua New Guinea (PNG) has long had serious difficulties with its electoral roll and voter identification practices. Recently, there has been a flurry of proposals for introducing biometric technology into this faltering system. A balanced assessment of the issues suggests caution should be taken. There are no quick fixes for PNG’s electoral roll woes, and while biometric technology could have a positive impact in some respects, there are substantial costs.Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trad
(In press) Colonization and Public Policy: A Bureaucratic Regime Approach to Analysing Policy in South Asia from the Colonial to the Post-Colonial Era
No full textThis book examines the development of social policy in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan through the framework of bureaucratic regimes. It traces the institutional continuity from the colonial Indian Civil Service to its post-colonial successors - the Bangladesh Administrative Service, the Indian Administrative Service, and the Pakistan Administrative Service - revealing how these enduring structures have shaped social policies, influenced welfare outcomes, and reinforced social inequalities. Adopting a comparative historical institutionalist approach, the book advances theoretical and empirical understanding and offers a fresh perspective on welfare regimes in the Global South. Peer-reviewe