60 research outputs found
Are Ghana's roads paying their way? Assessing road use cost and user charges in Ghana
No full textThe author studied how much road damage contributes to road use costs in Ghana and how the marginal social costs should be recovered. This required understanding the road deterioration process better and analyzing the implications for vehicle operating costs and road user charges. The most important thing learned is that studies of road-user costs are feasible in reputedly data-poor countries. The author found that to bridge the gap between road-user costs and charges, the annual fee for heavy trucks should be raised tenfold. Fuel taxes alone are not adequate to distinguish fully the large difference in road damage costs incurred by heavy trucks and private cars. The taxing instrument most deficient in Ghana is the annual licensing fee. Not only should licensing fees for heavy trucks be ten times higher than they are now, but exemptions from the licensing fee should be canceled and registration rules strictly enforced. Even then, charges on heavy vehicles will not cover costs unless current legal limits of axle loading are obeyed. A more efficient means of reducing the damaging effects of heavy vehicles lies in structuring the annual fees to reflect how much more damaging two-axle heavy vehicles are than multiaxle vehicles. The issue of redistribution of costs and fees is of secondary importance in Ghana because of low fuel consumption, low level of fuel taxes, and the fact that expenditures on fuels are proportionately the same for the poor and the nonpoor.Roads&Highways,Airports and Air Services,Transport and Environment,Urban Transport,Public Sector Economics&Finance
Dispersal changes soil bacterial interactions with fungal wood decomposition
No full textAbstract Although microbes are the major agent of wood decomposition - a key component of the carbon cycle - the degree to which microbial community dynamics affect this process is unclear. One key knowledge gap is the extent to which stochastic variation in community assembly, e.g. due to historical contingency, can substantively affect decomposition rates. To close this knowledge gap, we manipulated the pool of microbes dispersing into laboratory microcosms using rainwater sampled across a transition zone between two vegetation types with distinct microbial communities. Because the laboratory microcosms were initially identical this allowed us to isolate the effect of changing microbial dispersal directly on community structure, biogeochemical cycles and wood decomposition. Dispersal significantly affected soil fungal and bacterial community composition and diversity, resulting in distinct patterns of soil nitrogen reduction and wood mass loss. Correlation analysis showed that the relationship among soil fungal and bacterial community, soil nitrogen reduction and wood mass loss were tightly connected. These results give empirical support to the notion that dispersal can structure the soil microbial community and through it ecosystem functions. Future biogeochemical models including the links between soil microbial community and wood decomposition may improve their precision in predicting wood decomposition
A global database of soil microbial phospholipid fatty acids and enzyme activities
No full textAbstract Soil microbes drive ecosystem function and play a critical role in how ecosystems respond to global change. Research surrounding soil microbial communities has rapidly increased in recent decades, and substantial data relating to phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) and potential enzyme activity have been collected and analysed. However, studies have mostly been restricted to local and regional scales, and their accuracy and usefulness are limited by the extent of accessible data. Here we aim to improve data availability by collating a global database of soil PLFA and potential enzyme activity measurements from 12,258 georeferenced samples located across all continents, 5.1% of which have not previously been published. The database contains data relating to 113 PLFAs and 26 enzyme activities, and includes metadata such as sampling date, sample depth, and soil pH, total carbon, and total nitrogen. This database will help researchers in conducting both global- and local-scale studies to better understand soil microbial biomass and function
Mapping transference : problems of African literature and translation from French into English
No full textAlthough a number of African literary works have been
translated from French into English since the middle of this
century, research and debate on their translation has remained
scanty, fragmentary, and scattered in diverse learned journals
and other short publications. This thesis seeks to broaden the
scope of research by mapping out aspects of transference in
translation in terms of analysis and transfer strategies that
have been, or could be, used. A selection of major translated
works have been compared with their originals, to give textual
examples indicative of transfer strategies.
Current issues in African literature as well as typical
features of the literature in French and English have been
explored in order to examine differences between them and English
and French literatures. The implications of these differences (at
the levels of content, cultural setting, peculiar use of English
and French, and the target audience) for translation are
considered, and a brief historical survey of the translation of
African literature provides insights into how translators have
approached, and continue to approach, literary texts as well as
cope with their target readership. Furthermore, dominant trends
in literary translation studies (mainly in the West) are explored
to determine if, and in what ways, they relate to translation
studies in Africa.
The analysis of transfer strategies focuses on the
distinctive features of francophone African literary texts,
drawing on relevant Western literary translation theories and
models, on African literary theory and criticism, as well as on
other disciplines likely contribute to an informed understanding
of the texts. Finally, a case study applies the analysis to a
text which is translated, and transfer strategies discussed
The Pocahontas narratives in the era of the romantic representations of the native americans and their influence on the construction of an american national identity
No full textTese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura CorrespondenteThis dissertation analyses five literary texts about Pocahontas and some of the visual representations about the Native American girl, which were produced during American Romanticism comparing / contrasting these texts with the founding narratives of James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans and The Pioneers, as well as with two other novels of the same period, Catherine Maria Sedgwick's Hope Leslie and Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok. The objective of this research is to show that the Romantic narratives on Pocahontas are important for the definition of an American national identity through the discussion of themes like miscegenation, liminal figures and the captivity narratives inserted in these texts. In order to make such analysis, this dissertation begins with a discussion of the historical aspects concerning the story of Pocahontas, then a survey about the theoretical background, dealing with the theories on nation and national identity of Ernest Renan, Benedict Anderson and Homi Bhabha. The theoretical chapter is followed by a comparative / contrastive analysis of the texts, including the visual representations, which concludes with the idea that Cooper's narratives portray a traditional view of the American nation, while the Pocahontas textual and visual narratives give a different view of it. This analysis also led this dissertation to conclude that the story of Pocahontas has had a great influence on the construction of a national identity in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the moment when the American nation was establishing itself as a new one. The Pocahontas narratives do not deal with nation and national identity in the same way the other narratives do, but they ar
Optimal user charges and cost recovery for roads in developing countries
No full textThe optimal charge for road use is equal to variable costs for road maintenance, together with the costs road users impose on other road users and on the rest of society. One persistent question raised about such charges is what impact they have on cost recovery. The theoretical literature argues that if there are constant returns to scale in road construction and in road use, the optimal user charge will recover the capital costs of the road network and the total expenditures on road maintenance. Empirical estimates for such a system of road user charges in Tunisia similarly suggest that they would generate twice the revenues currently spent on roads. The authors examine these issues from both theoretical and practical perspectives. They conclude that there are substantial economies of scale in both road construction and road use. Also, road maintenancecosts include a number of fixed costs that do not vary with traffic. Moreover, since roads cannot be smoothly adjusted to traffic, marginal costs for the entire road network are significantly lower than average costs in most developing countries, unless capacity is artificially constrained by environmental or other constraints. Under these conditions, optimal user charges result in a substantial financial deficit. The authors also address the question of how this deficit should be financed.Roads&Highways,Economic Theory&Research,Water Supply and Sanitation Finance,Airports and Air Services,Public Sector Economics&Finance
Explaining Output Volatility: The Case of Taxation
No full textThis paper presents empirical evidence against the popular perception that macro volatility is exogenous. We obtain tax effects on macro aggregates in the stochastic neoclassical model. Taxes are shown to affect the second moment of output growth rates without affecting the first moment. Exploiting heterogeneity patterns in a panel of OECD countries, we estimate tax effects on macro volatility, explicitly modeling the unobserved variance process. We find a strong empirical link between taxes and output volatility. Accounting for non-stationarity of taxes and output volatility, we find empirical evidence of a cointegrating relationship.macroeconomic volatility, tax effects, continuous-time DSGE models
Iowa History and Culture : A Bibliography of Materials Published Between 1952 and 1986, 1989
No full textThis bibliography was compiled by two reference librarians, Patricia Dawson and David Hudson with the goal of making it easier of tracking down material on Iowa history and culture. This supplements the Iowa History Reference Guide published in 1952 by William Petersen
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