SciDev.Net

This report from the WHO assesses the potential for creating early warning systems for vector-borne disease. It reviews the current state of research for several diseases such as dengue fever, leishmaniasis, malaria and West Nile virus.

The report includes an algorithmic framework for developing early warning systems, outlining data requirements and the different components of the system. It also contains two useful tables: one on the sensitivity of different infectious diseases to climate; and one summarising the existing research, identifying in which region the disease is most common, data availability and proposed actions.

A key problem in developing early warning systems, as highlighted by this report, is that non-climatic risk factors such as population immunity and food security strongly affect the potential for a disease outbreak. Equally challenging is the poor disease surveillance in many developing countries — the authors call on these countries to strengthen these systems, to help in the fight against climate change.

The report concludes that it will be important for researchers not to design these systems in isolation — health policymakers should be included at all stages of the design.

This report, written by climate change economist Stephen Seres and published by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), analyses the extent to which projects funded by the UNFCCC's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) contribute to technology transfer.

Although the CDM does not have an explicit technology transfer mandate, it contributes to technology transfer by funding projects that use technologies previously unavailable in host countries. Using data from over 3000 registered and proposed CDM projects, Seres finds over a third claim to involve technology transfer — of both knowledge and equipment.

Most of the technology originates from Germany, France, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Some countries — including Bolivia, Ecuador, Kenya, Malaysia and Sri Lanka — have a much higher than average rate of technology transfer. Others, such as Brazil and China, have a much lower than average rate, although where there is technology transfer, it often extends beyond individual CDM projects.

This World Bank report describes the role higher education plays in building developing countries' capacity to participate in a knowledge-based world economy and outlines policy options to promote economic development. It confirms the shift in the World Bank's attitude to education support as a driver of socioeconomic growth.

The authors ask why higher education is important for development, how developing countries can best utilise their higher education systems, and how the World Bank and other donors can support local governments. They argue that knowledge is essential for development — and higher education is essential to create and apply knowledge.

They conclude that developing countries risk marginalisation because of their weak higher education systems, and stress the need for government and donor support.

This World Bank report examines higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa, asking how it can stimulate economic growth in the region. Drawing on international experience and regional case studies, the authors argue that there is an urgent need for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to invest in human capital and knowledge — and therefore higher education — to create a viable and growth-promoting industrial system, and cope with threats such as disease, population growth and climate change.

They discuss how and why human capital investment can lead to socioeconomic growth and review current practices in Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors propose a number of good practices to help countries in the region strengthen their higher education systems quickly and effectively.

Recommendations include developing a national strategy for developing human resources, reforming funding mechanisms for higher education, giving institutions decision-making powers, encouraging diversity and developing postgraduate programs to boost local research capacity.

This report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) calls for international action to combat the global economic crisis with a stimulus package based on clean energy and environmental protection. The author — Edward B Barbier from the University of Wyoming — argues that while stimulating growth and creating jobs are key objectives, unless new policy initiatives also reduce carbon dependency, protect ecosystems and water resources, and alleviate poverty they will not be enough to avert future crises.

Developed countries must remove subsidies and adopt complementary carbon pricing policies, says Barbier. Developing countries should spend at least one per cent of GDP on improving access to clean water and should also expand educational and health services for the poor. And all economies should consider removing water subsidies to increase water efficiency, he adds.

He concludes that the international community has a central role to play in promoting this global green new deal — through global governance, facilitating access to development assistance and enhancing trade incentives.

This report, published by the Project on Emerging Technologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, looks at social and ethical issues of emerging technologies, with a focus on nanotechnologies.

The author examines social context issues such as unequal access to health care, morally controversial practices such as synthetic biology, the emergence of technoculture, and life issues.

He discusses three common misconceptions; that it is too soon to understand the ethical implications of new technologies; that raising ethical issues hinders technological and social progress; and that the sole purpose of ethical and social research is to secure public acceptance.

The author concludes that ethical considerations can anticipate and proactively address any negative aspects.

This report, published by Centre d'Économie Industrielle (CERNA) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), examines the distribution of climate mitigation inventions since 1973 and their international transfer.

Based on an analysis of patent data, the authors find that innovations are mostly made — and exchanged between — developed countries, although China and South Korea are found among the top ten inventors. Only 18 per cent of climate mitigation technology exports come from emerging economies, but this proportion is growing rapidly and offers huge potential for North–South and South–South exchanges.

Technologies considered in the report include wind, solar, geothermal and biomass energy, energy conservation in buildings, motor vehicle fuel injection, and carbon capture and storage.

The authors use graphs and tables to present their results. Their findings suggest that the Kyoto protocol has induced innovation but has had no effect on technology transfer.

This report, published by E3G and Chatham House proposes an institutional framework for the innovation and transfer of low carbon and adaptation technologies, and suggests key features for the international agreement due to be signed at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The authors include an executive summary and an analysis of key issues including technology options, capacity in developing countries and intellectual property rights (IPR).

They also make recommendations for action, calling for objectives to be set in terms of critical technologies that need developing. Other suggestions include creating a multilateral innovation and diffusion fund, using sectoral approaches to accelerate technology development and deployment, and establishing a 'protect and share' agreement for IPR.

This report, published by the Global Forum for Health Research, tracks global investments in health research and development (R&D).

The authors review global targets and commitments for R&D in health and evaluate how well these are being met. They highlight the differences in funding by region, including analyses from Argentina, China and the United States; and provide a breakdown of investments in R&D for cancer and 20 widespread infectious diseases.

They also describe the different sources of R&D funding, providing data on private, public and not-for-profit investments.

The authors discuss the implications of the current funding climate for future health research and make recommendations for improving research agendas, suggesting that R&D investments must match the health needs of developing countries now and in the future.

This report, published by the Center for International Development at Harvard University and the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya, asks which institutions and approaches are most effective in using scientific knowledge to inform development strategies.

The authors evaluate five agricultural projects in Africa and Asia and suggest that the best strategies for closing the gaps between knowledge and action include: 'boundary-spanning' efforts such as creating partnerships to improve dialogue between researchers and local communities; 'use-driven' research directed at solving particular problems for particular groups of people; engaging stakeholders from the outset of a project; providing incentives for risk-taking; and improving project management and communication skills.

This report summarises progress towards each of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in ten regions, based on data available as of June 2008. Each goal is reviewed, clearly identifying the different targets embedded in each and presenting data to show progress to date and gaps in achievement.

The report emphasises the deep commitment made by the international community to meeting the goals and highlights some of the advances made in areas such as primary school education, health, access to safe drinking water, use of ozone-depleting substances and access to critical drugs.

At the same time, the report points to areas where the goals are unlikely to be met unless additional, or corrective, action is taken. These include child malnutrition, gender parity, sanitation, carbon emissions and international trade negotiations.

A key message is the need to improve developing countries' capacity to produce, analyse and disseminate data. The report points to a number of initiatives aimed at helping this happen.

This joint publication between the World Health Organization and the Global Forum for Health Research reveals mental health research capacity in 114 low-income and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The extensive review identified over 10,000 articles, 4,633 mental health researchers and 3,829 other stakeholders. The authors argue that this is "the first systematic attempt to confirm the pressing needs of improving research capacity in mental health".

The publication provides useful details in table and charts, analysed by group of stakeholders and by region, on topics such as: researchers' profiles; priority-setting process; amount and type of research production; services and technical support available to them; courses and trainings offered; funding patterns; and dissemination of research findings. The appendix provides two extensive lists — by country — of policy and practice that resulted from research evidence, as well as research evidence that was never translated into policy and practice.

Nine recommendations indicate how the management of mental health research can be strengthened so that it meets the national needs of the countries as well as contributes to the global fund of knowledge. The authors say their report thus enables evidence-based decision-making in funding and priority setting in the area of mental health research in low-income and middle-income countries.

Chronic diseases — heart and lung disease, cancer and diabetes — are having a negative economic impact on both the developed and developing world, says this report, which is why they should be properly addressed by domestic and international policy makers. Compared to the epidemiological evidence on the rise of non-communicable diseases in developing nations, there is little information on how this increase will affect their economies.

This report investigates the demographics of the problem and finds that contrary to popular belief, the disproportionate burden of disease on the elderly does have economic implications. The reason is that though the elderly may not be part of the workforce, they are still consumers and therefore a part of the economic equation.

Whether approaches to tackling chronic diseases are cost-effective or not is a vital issue for countries whose health budgets are already overstretched — the report outlines some of the interventions that offer most bang for buck. The authors point out that strategies that work well in developed countries are not so effective in developing countries, and call for more research to assess what will be appropriate.

This extensive report was one of the first to document the scale of the problem of chronic diseases in developing countries, and crucially, to offer guidance on feasible and practical methods of tackling them.

The document starts by laying out in detail the profiles of chronic diseases in different countries, projections for the future, and how chronic diseases are linked with poverty. It also examines in depth the economic costs of such diseases and the macroeconomic consequences of not tackling them quickly enough. The authors outline interventions — whether community, workplace, or school — that have robust evidence supporting them.

The report ends with a call for a unifying framework of global health experts and stakeholders, in which the government has a key role. It also specifies what policymakers need to do to ensure that measures to tackle chronic diseases are put into action.

The report summarises the results of a survey of African Universities’ experiences in collaborating with scientists and institutions in developed countries. The study was carried out by the Association of Commonwealth Universities to provide background information to support the recent development thrust aimed at strengthening African universities through greater investment and North–South (and South–South) collaboration. It focuses primarily on social sciences and humanities research. The report presents empirical data on institutional goals, resource availability, prevalence and satisfaction with collaborative arrangements, challenges faced by individual researchers, capacity building as well as training and research support.

This paper presents a review of the challenges of international scholarly scientific collaboration. It looks at institutional constraints and points out that the challenges and problems multiply when collaborators come from different countries with differing conditions, resource endowments and institutional structures. It is easier to call for more and better forms of international collaboration than it is to design them. The report asserts that good design is helped by a better understanding of what collaboration is and how it has been carried out. It draws on social research insights to help reduce the transactional, financial, ethical and emotional costs of international linkages and exchange and provides a conceptual framework for thinking about international collaboration issues.

Commissioned by UK Office of Science and Innovation, the report looks at the trend of international scientific collaboration between the United Kingdom and its leading partners. It uses bibliometric data (co-authorship and citations of scientific articles) to capture international scientific collaboration in seven broad research fields, focusing on Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, UK and the US. The data deals with two time-periods, 1996–2000 and 2001–2005 and the report finds that publication of co-authored articles on scientific collaboration has increased considerably faster than the overall increase in research across the two time-periods. It also finds that countries vary in their ability to collaborate or to benefit from it. The results may have important implications for putting international scientific collaborative arrangements in place.

This report attempts to understand the growing trend of international scientific collaboration as a preferred method of building scientific capacity in developing countries. Before the effects of these trends can be documented, however, there is a need to better define scientific capacity itself. This is relevant not only as an end in itself but also as a means of identifying potential collaborators. The traditional dichotomy of developed and developing countries no longer seems to serve the purpose of increasing useful understanding of these trends. The report attempts to provide a new index of scientific capacity based on an aggregation of several national-level measures and creates a useful taxonomy of countries categorised by scientific capacity. The four classifications arising from this taxonomy are scientifically advanced, proficient, developing, and lagging countries. It examines the trends in output, productivity, collaboration and linkages between and among countries in each of these categories.

This report, prepared for the UNESCO Cairo Office, presents data and information on higher education systems in 21 Arab states over a five-year period (1992–1996). It is an update of a previous study published in 1995

Data presented includes the number of institutions, enrolment, structure and financing of higher education systems in these countries. The study also covers the growing participation of private and non-profit sectors in higher education delivery. It highlights a number of challenges faced by the higher education systems in the Arab world, including the growing role of private sector, issues in quality, demand for more diversified university programmes, and the growing importance and participation of universities in R&D systems.

This draft report of the High-Level African Panel on Modern Biotechnology recommends that African governments prioritise biotechnology as a tool to promote development and integration. The panel advises African leaders on developments in biotechnology, capacity building needs, and measures for regional cooperation and regulatory harmonisation.

The report suggests measures to develop capacity, regulate biotechnology and improve North–South and South–South collaboration. It recommends a structure based on 'local innovation areas' where clusters of innovative companies, their suppliers and service providers, universities and research institutes are all concentrated in a small area.

This draft report is subject to ongoing consultation and is likely to undergo further development. It is an essential read for anyone tracking the evolution of high-level biotechnology policies in Africa.