Bicycle ergometry in subacute-stroke survivors: feasibility, safety, and exercise performance

This study evaluated the feasibility, safety, and findings from a protocol for exercise-bicycle ergometry in subacute-stroke survivors. Of 117 eligible candidates, 14 could not perform the test and 3 discontinued because of cardiac safety criteria. In the 100 completed tests, peak heart rate was 116 +/- 19.1 beats/min; peak VO(2) was 11.4 +/- 3.7 ml x kg x min(-1), peak METs were 3.3 +/- 0.91, exercise duration was 5.1 +/- 2.84 min, and Borg score was 14 +/- 2.6. Among 71 tests, anaerobic threshold was achieved in 3.0 +/- 1.7 min with a VO(2) of 8.6 +/- 1.7 ml x kg x min(-1). After screening, this protocol is feasible and safe in subacute-stroke survivors with mild to moderate deficits. These stroke survivors have severely limited functional exercise capacity. Research and clinical practice in stroke rehabilitation should incorporate more comprehensive evaluation and treatment of endurance limitations.     

The Structural Adjustment Experiment

Book reviewed in this article: Stabilization and Structural Adjustment: Macro-economic Frameworks for Analysing the Crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa. By Finn Tarp Structural Adjustment and Beyond in Sub-Saharan Africa: Research and Policy Issues. Edited by Rolph van der Hoeven and Fred van der Kraaij Hemmed In: Responses to Africa's Economic Decline. Edited by Thomas M. Callaghy and John Ravenhill     

WEIGHING THE MILITARY OPTION: THE EFFECTS OF WARTIME CONDITIONS ON INVESTMENTS IN HUMAN CAPITAL

Serving in the military is an important vehicle through which young Americans invest in their human capital. As such, changes in the desirability of military service may affect the attainment of enlistment requirements, such as a high school degree or equivalent. Using American Community Survey data, we find that exposure to home‐state combat fatalities during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars decreased the probability of high school completion, and increased the probability of general equivalency diploma completion. Using military data, we confirm that exposure to home‐state fatalities selectively deterred some individuals from enlisting. The results suggest military service and educational investments are complements. (JEL I20, I26, J24)     

DFID governance programming in Nigeria: What difference has thinking and working politically made in practice?

The UK Department for International Development's country office in Nigeria (DFID Nigeria) has gradually adopted a thinking and working politically (TWP) approach in its governance programming. The initial focus on strengthening analysis has progressively been linked to discussion about the country and programme strategy, as well as programme‐management practices. Important lessons can be learned from this experience on how the TWP approach can be applied in practice. The article addresses three research questions: (1) To what extent have DFID Nigeria and its governance programmes adopted a TWP approach? (2) How has the TWP approach influenced the design and delivery of programming? (3) Has the application of the TWP approach enhanced the results of the DFID governance programming? Using project documentation and wider theoretical literature, but mainly relying on extensive participant observation within DFID Nigeria programmes, the article uses a historical perspective to outline how the TWP approach has been applied in Nigeria over 15 years of programme design, delivery, lesson‐learning and refinement . Published evaluation reports are used to provide evidence of programme results. DFID Nigeria and its programmes have progressively adopted TWP principles. This has led to clear changes in country strategy and programme design, as well as programme‐management practices. There is some evidence that the adoption of these principles has enhanced the results of DFID Nigeria programmes. By focusing on experimentation and “small bets,” TWP has proven relatively successful in generating and supporting ‘islands of effectiveness,’ but has had more limited impact in terms of generating more systemic, transformational change. The results obtained in Nigeria using the TWP approach have depended not only on Nigeria's political economy but also on the political economy of the development agency and donor country. DFID Nigeria's ability to engage in critical self‐reflection and to create an authorizing environment for risk‐taking have been vital to create enabling conditions for the TWP approach. However, other aspects of DFID and the UK's political economy are creating constraints that limit the prospects to go further and to go deeper in adopting the principles of TWP.     

Leaving like an Englishman: Assisting institutional reform in post‐communist Ukraine

Scholars of Development Studies have largely distanced themselves from research into external advice on governance reform in Ukraine, regarding post‐communist reconstruction as a political rather than developmental project. This article suggests that these seemingly distinct fields of donor intervention have more in common than is usually thought. It examines the influence of external advice on an issue which has particular resonance in the light of recent events in Ukraine, the relationship between Kyiv and the regions. It is argued that the impact of international assistance in this area has been negligible, largely due to institutional factors on the donor side, and that the most persuasive explanations for this are to be found in the literature of Development Studies.     

Politics and Growth

Theories of growth have made progress in understanding the mechanisms of growth in economic terms. However, there is less understanding of the political processes that enable or obstruct these mechanisms. This article provides a four‐stage framework to clarify and analyse the connections between politics and growth: (i) discussing the basic conditions essential for growth; (ii) suggesting that whether or not these conditions emerge depends on specific forms of public‐private interaction; (iii) linking these relationships to the incentives facing those in political power and investors; and (iv) considering the factors at country level that may help to push incentives in a pro‐growth direction.     

Interacting effects of nutrition and social class differentials on fertility and infant mortality in the pre-industrial population

Inadequate nutrition of both the mother and her offspring at each stage of its development - before pregnancy, in the womb, in infancy and during early childhod - played an important role in the patterns of subfertility and infant mortality in a saturated, marginal, preindustrial community. It is suggested that the three social classes had different diets but all were deficient in some essential constituents. Differences in nursing practices in the social groups contributed to differential exogenous mortality and to malnourishment and maternal depletion in the subsistence and (paradoxically) in the elite classes, producing an interacting web of effects and generating a vicious circle from which they could not escape for 150 years. Although the population apparently preferred daughters, the persistent generation effect of low birthweight girls bearing low birthweight daughters probably contributed to the steady-state conditions in this compromised community.