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This book gathers in one volume all the information needed to use ADePT Edu, the software platform created by the World Bank for the reporting and analysis of education indicators and education inequality. It includes a primer on education data availability, an operating manual for the software, a technical explanation of all the education indicators generated, and an overview of global education inequality using ADePT Edu. The World Bank developed ADePT Edu to fill the need for a user-friendly program designed to give everyone the ability to organize and analyze education data from households. ADePT Edu can be used with any household survey with the aid of its user friendly interface, generating education tables and graphics that comply with international standards for performance indicators. Because this volume is a compendium its chapters can be consulted independently of each other, depending on the need of users.

To explore feeding strategies and identify eventual errors that could cause poor production and reproduction performances in dairy farms in the north of Algeria. A survey was conducted among 211 farms of different sizes, from 2014 to 2018 to compose a database that is analyzed statistically. The results relative to the nutritive value of the rations showed an average dry matter intake of 15.9 ± 4.74 kg/cow/day, providing 13.2 ± 4.34 UFL (Feed Unit for Lactation) of net energy and 1306 ± 456 gm of protein digested in small intestine (PDI)/cow/day. A high proportion of concentrate intake is observed, with an average of 64.7% ± 17.4% of energy intake and 70.2% ± 16.2% of nitrogen intake. Dairy cows performances were characterized by a low milk production regarding their genetic potential (14.2 ± 4.73 kg of milk/cow/day), a calving interval > to one year (397 ± 20.4 days), though the coverage rates of their nutrient requirements reached 120%. The typology of the dietary rations allowed grouping them into three categories: deficient rations cluster (DR), correct rations cluster, and excessive rations cluster (ER). DR and ER, which are not adjusted to animals' needs, were found in 57.8% of farms. It is obvious that the feeding management in the dairy farms in the North of Algeria is not based upon scientific achievements, contributing to relatively low performances of cows as well as to important financial losses. This finding imposes the necessity to adopt a correct and accurate rationing of animals.

Ethiopia, like most developing countries, has opted to deliver services such as basic education, primary health care, agricultural extension advice, water, and rural roads through a highly decentralized system (Manor 1999; Treisman 2007). That choice is based on several decades of theoretical analysis examining how a decentralized government might respond better to diverse local needs and provide public goods more efficiently than a highly centralized government. Ethiopia primarily manages the delivery of basic services at the woreda (district) level. Those services are financed predominantly through intergovernmental fiscal transfers (IGFTs) from the federal to the regional and then the woreda administrations, although some woredas raise a small amount of revenue to support local services. Since 2006, development partners and the government have cofinanced block grants for decentralized services through the Promoting Basic Services (PBS) Program. Aside from funding the delivery of services, the program supports measures to improve the quality of services and local governments capacity to deliver them by strengthening accountability and citizen voice.

In this paper we review drift-feeding models for stream salmonids. We assess their historical development and current state, and we propose areas for future research. Drift-feeding models serve as the critical input for energetics-based habitat selection and habitat quality models, which have recently begun to see widespread use for predicting salmonid distribution, growth and abundance. We use a bibliometric approach to find drift-feeding model publications, especially those citing three landmark papers that began the quantification of drift feeding by stream fish (Fausch 1984; Hughes and Dill 1990; Hill and Grossman 1993). Subsequent drift-feeding models have largely been built upon these models. Research effort has focused on model development and applications but model testing has been neglected. To date, the only rigorous test of a drift-feeding model (Hughes et al. 2003) identified several limitations and violations of model assumptions. The most important limitation was that prey capture- and gross energy intake rates were overestimated by a factor of two, due largely to poor predictions of prey detection probabilities. Consequences of error in drift-feeding models, and consequently in the habitat selection/quality models that employ them, are greater for applications aimed at predicting growth and abundance than they are for predicting distribution. Research effort on a broad front is needed to advance both drift-feeding models and habitat selection/quality models, including: further development of drift-foraging theory, revision and testing of drift-feeding models (specifically new, functional prey detection and interception sub-models), and revision of habitat selection/quality models to incorporate spatial, temporal, and flow-dependent variation in drift concentration.

Microhabitat variables are determinants for animals to select forage patches and evaluate the cost/benefit tradeoffs of habitat switching. Optimal foragers would weigh habitat quality by giving-up net energy intake rate (GUN), which includes the energy intake rate and cost rate. The GUNs, energy intake rate, and cost rate can be influenced by variations in different microhabitat factors and interactive effects. In this study, we assessed the GUN patterns of wintering Bewick’s swans and the effects of microhabitat factors on their foraging strategy in three different habitats: foxnut ponds, paddy fields, and shallow lake. The foraging behaviors and microhabitat variables of the swans were investigated during the winters of 2016–2018 and 2017/2018 at Huangpi and Shengjin Lakes in Anhui Province, southeastern China. The results showed that the percentage of disturbance time and the giving-up food density in shallow water had significant negative effects on GUNs. In contrast, water depth and the giving-up food density in deep water showed positive effects on GUNs. GUNs were significantly different among the three habitats. GUNs also decreased as winter progressed. Swans would decrease their GUNs under unfavorable foraging conditions such as more disturbances; however, GUNs would increase with water depth and food availability in patches with deep water. The swans demonstrated diverse GUN patterns in different foraging habitats, driven by the tradeoffs between energy intake rates and energy cost rates that were influenced by microhabitat variables. It implies that waterbirds exposed to decreasing GUNs may mitigate energy demand and environmental stress by switching foraging habitat while in subprime foraging habitat if alternative habitats that offered higher net rates of energy gain were available.

Recently emerging from a decade-long civil war, Sierra Leone is making a remarkable recovery. The future holds great promise as well as many challenges for the education system in Sierra Leone. The rapid expansion of enrollments in primary school after the war will place pressure on the secondary school level and careful planning will be required to manage the expansion. As the priority shifts from emergency rehabilitation of schools to established basic service delivery, overcrowded classes and the quality of teaching and learning will need to be addressed. Focus should turn to the children from poor families and to eliminating disparities across regions, urban and rural areas and between boys and girls. The future of the education system will depend largely on the success of the decentralization process, which in turn relies on careful planning and the building of local and central capacity. All of this will require fiscally sustainable long-term development plans for the education sector.This book is an analysis of the education system in Sierra Leone, particularly at the primary and secondary levels. It provides an analytical foundation for the preparation of an education sector-wide strategy.

Drift-foraging models offer a mechanistic description of how fish feed in flowing water and the application of drift-foraging bioenergetics models to answer both applied and theoretical questions in aquatic ecology is growing. These models typically include nonlinear descriptions of ecological processes and as a result may be sensitive to how model inputs are summarized because of a mathematical property of nonlinear equations known as Jensen’s inequality. In particular, we show that the way in which continuous size distributions of invertebrate prey are represented within foraging models can lead to biases within the modeling process. We begin by illustrating how different equations common to drift-foraging models are sensitive to invertebrate inputs. We then use two case studies to show how different representations of invertebrate prey can influence predictions of energy intake and lifetime growth. Greater emphasis should be placed on accurate characterizations of invertebrate drift, acknowledging that inferences from drift-foraging models may be influenced by how invertebrate prey are represented.

We developed models to predict the effect of water velocity on prey capture rates and on optimal foraging velocities of two sympatric juvenile salmonids, coho salmon and steelhead. Mean fish size was ~80 mm, the size of age I+ coho and steelhead during their second summer in Southeast Alaska streams, when size overlap suggests that competition might be strongest. We used experimentally determined prey capture probabilities to estimate the effect of water velocity on gross energy intake rates, and we modeled prey capture costs using experimental data for search and handling times and published models of swimming costs. We used the difference between gross energy intake and prey capture costs to predict velocities at which each species maximized net energy intake rate. Predicted prey capture rates for both species declined from ~75 to 30-40 prey/h with a velocity increase from 0.30 to 0.60 m·s⁻¹. We found little difference between coho and steelhead in predicted optimum foraging velocities (0.29 m·s⁻¹ for coho and 0.30 m·s⁻¹ for steelhead). Although prey capture ability appears to be more important than are prey capture costs in determining optimum foraging velocities, capture costs may be important for models that predict fish growth. Because coho are assumed to pay a greater swimming cost due to a less hydrodynamic body form, we also modeled 10 and 25% increases in hydrodynamic drag to assess the effect of increased prey capture costs. This reduced optimum velocity by 0 and 0.01 m-s⁻¹, respectively. Habitat segregation among equal-sized coho and steelhead does not appear to be related to the effects of water velocity on their respective foraging abilities.

Habitat loss and degradation due to human activities are major threats to stream fishes. To predict and/or monitor habitat changes, quantification of suitable habitats for target fish species is indispensable. For drift-feeding salmonids, bioenergetics models that estimate energetic benefit (net energy intake: NEI) can be used for their habitat evaluation. In this study, we examined applicability of a bioenergetics model, which had been developed for Arctic grayling ( Thymallus arcticus ) in Alaska, North America, to habitat evaluation for red-spotted masu salmon ( Oncorhynchus masou ishikawae ) in southwestern Japan, by assessing whether their position choice can be predicted by the model. The results showed that the model successfully predicted their position choice in 12 of the total 16 study sections. Further, in two sections inhabited by several individuals, strong positive correlations were found between NEI potential and fish body length, being consistent with a widely reported trend in drift-feeding salmonids that larger individuals occupy more profitable positions. We concluded that the bioenergetics model we tested is useful in evaluating habitat quality for red-spotted masu salmon. Our results suggested that NEI models can be regarded as a site-independent, widely applicable tool for habitat evaluation for drift-feeding salmonids.

The central-place forager in a social-insect colony, e.g., the bumblebee, has been expected to maximize its net rate of energy gain to increase the success of its colony. In addition to foraging behavior, the nest location is an important factor for the success of the colony. The bumblebee's nest location would be affected by the spatial distribution of flowers and their food quality. In this study, we constructed a model to estimate bumblebee nest sites, using the net energy intake rate at available food sites for workers foraging from the nest site. We hypothesized that the probability of colony establishment at a site in coordinates (x, y) was high as the sum of the net energy intake rate I(x, y) increased. To obtain I(x, y), nectar standing crop, sugar concentration, and foraging time were measured for ten plant species in the study site covering 6.25 km². As available flowers changed seasonally, I(x, y) was calculated for three periods: the end of April, the beginning of May, and the middle of May. To verify our hypothesis, we compared the estimations in our model with the actual nest sites of Bombus ardens found in the beginning of May and June by means of tracking bumblebees. From the results, we considered that the net energy intake rate at mid-May might represent the probability of colony establishment, because it could affect colony persistence and reproductive success.