Pastoralists employ different strategies to minimize the risk of losing their livelihood due to drought, disease, and other disasters. Livestock transfers have been considered critical because they provide not only a safety net during disasters but also contribute to the resilience of pastoral societies by allowing pastoralists to rebuild their herds after disasters. I examine whether and how l...

In Senegal, a project has been undertaken to eradicate a population of tsetse flies (Glossina palpalis gambiensis) from a prime area for intensifying livestock production--the coastal region of Niayes. The project is intended to remove the constraint of trypanosomosis and allow the ecological intensification of cattle production. A cross-sectional analysis of ten case studies was the inductive ...

In December, 2010, Canada's 6 year old Assisted Human Reproduction Act was successfully challenged in the Supreme Court of Canada. There may be important implications for public health and the evolution of reproductive technologies in this country.

Can the modern economy function without a market for interestbased credit? This question has acquired some urgency in the wake of the recent Shariat Court ruling banning interest in Pakistan. Some pundits have pronounced that great harm will result from the banning of interest. Actually, such pronouncements are based on a lack of understanding of both the modern economic system, as well as the ...

In this paper, a single-product, single-machine system under Markovian deterioration of machine condition and demand uncertainty is studied.  The objective is to find the optimal intervals for inspection and preventive maintenance activities in a condition-based maintenance planning with discrete monitoring framework. At first, a stochastic dynamic programming model whose state variable is the ...

Transposition of diagnostic tests used in domestic livestock species to free-ranging and captive wildlife species has two problems. First, most existing tests have not been adequately validated in domestic livestock. Second, assumptions that a serological test will perform identically in wildlife and livestock species may not be correct, due to differences in pathogenic strains and serovars, ho...

We assess the credit market impact of allowing mortgage “strip-down” as a foreclosureprevention measure, where strip-down reduces the principal of underwater residential mortgages to the current market value of the property for homeowners in Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Our identification is provided by a series of U.S. court decisions that introduced strip-down in parts of the U.S. and a Supreme Cou...

The reliability of confessions is subject to a variety of factors, some of which give rise to expert testimony. To the degree that prosecutors construe the determination of reliability as an objective standard, they may attempt to bar testimony. Moreover, when the testimony is theoretical rather than clinical, there are additional challenges. Depending on jurisdiction, the admissibility of expe...

Not only does livestock makes an important contribution to rural incomes and export earnings in the Sahel, it is also kept as insurance against weather risk. Fluctuations in livestock prices can therefore trigger food entitlement failures. Using monthly price data from Niger, we show that livestock prices respond to droughts and pasture availability. They are also exposed to aggregate shifts in...