UNICEF ‘Child Poverty in Perspective’ Report: A View from the UK

In February 2007, UNICEF launched the latest in a series of reports comparing the conditions of young people's lives across the world's more industrialised countries. The report ranked the UK as the lowest of the countries investigated. We give a critical overview of the report, identifying its limitations as well as some of the trends it reveals. We also discuss the poor placing of the UK in relation to current broader political and public debates.     

Spatially varying relationships between municipal operating expenditure and its determinants: The case of South Africa

We apply the geographically weighted regression to investigate spatial variability (nonstationarity) in the relationships between municipal operating expenditure (in total and for a separate component thereof) and the determinants of this expenditure, in South Africa. The empirical findings indicate that some of these relationships are spatially varying for the period under consideration. The global model (i.e., least square regression) cannot take account of the unequal environment in which South African municipalities operate. One implication of our findings is that a “one-size-fits-all” approach in the design of policies targeting municipal finances may not be appropriate for municipalities in South Africa, and indeed in other contexts in which such heterogeneity is found. Instead, policy formulation should explicitly consider relevant differences in local conditions.     

On the Margins: Enduring Pre-Modern Water Management Strategies In and Around the Registan Desert,Afghanistan

The Registan Desert in southern Afghanistan has, like most deserts, traditionally been regarded as a barren, hostile space, devoid of human occupation other than occasional nomad campsites and an isolated 11th-century a.d. fortress. Detailed analysis of a strip of high resolution satellite imagery available through Google Earth and stretching into the Registan has revealed the presence of over 800 hitherto unrecorded archaeological sites. Many of these sites relate to water management, and predate the modern era. The water installations form networks of sites which facilitated the opportunistic exploitation of grazing following periodic rains, desert farming, travel, trade and exchange over hundreds of years, if not longer. Extrapolating from this detailed analysis, we argue that thousands of other sites have yet to be discovered in the Registan. These water management networks warrant further study in the field and protection from neglect, construction, recreational four-wheel driving, and looting.     

A Study of African Wild Ass Behavior Provides Insights into Conservation Issues, Domestication Processes and Archaeological Interpretation

African wild asses (Equus africanus) were the wild ancestors of the donkey and are now critically endangered. Ethological and middle range research on Somali wild asses (E. a. somaliensis) at the Saint Louis Zoo provides insights into social behavior in captive setting and domestication processes. We observed a group of three young female Somali wild asses to develop an ethogram of social behavior in the first phase of a longer-term study of social, sexual, and maternal/infant behavior. The most unexpected finding was the frequency and extent of aggressive interactions, yet they also displayed a preference for close proximity. As the first quantitative study of the social behavior of wild asses, these results provide insights into domestication processes, suggesting that in captivity African wild asses are behaviorally plastic. These findings regarding the behavior of captive wild asses further the goals of both archaeology and conservation biology.