Shawn F. Dorius

The Rise and Fall of Worldwide Education Inequality from 1870 to 2010: Measurement and Trends

This research documents long-run trends in between-country education inequality and proposes a method for doing so that accounts for the ways in which most education variables differ from continuous variables such as income. Historical, national-level estimates of primary schooling enrollment rates and years of completed primary, secondary, and total schooling are used to identify several problems that arise when formal measures of inequality are used to estimate intercountry education convergence, including violation of the welfare, scale invariance, and anonymity principles. An alternate measurement strategy shows that the intercountry trend in the dispersion of education has followed an approximately normal curve over the past 140 years, but with considerable variation across measures of education. These results are in contradiction to previous education inequality studies, which have reported either monotonically rising or falling intercountry inequality.

Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture: opportunities and challenges emerging from the science and information technology revolution

Contents Summary 1407 I. Introduction 1408 II. Technological advances and their utility for gene banks and breeding, and longer-term contributions to SDGs 1408 III. The challenges that must be overcome to realise emerging R&D opportunities 1410 IV. Renewed governance structures for PGR (and related big data) 1413 V. Access and benefit sharing and big data 1416 VI. Conclusion 1417 Acknowledgements 1417 ORCID 1417 References 1417 SUMMARY: Over the last decade, there has been an ongoing revolution in the exploration, manipulation and synthesis of biological systems, through the development of new technologies that generate, analyse and exploit big data. Users of Plant Genetic Resources (PGR) can potentially leverage these capacities to significantly increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their efforts to conserve, discover and utilise novel qualities in PGR, and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This review advances the discussion on these emerging opportunities and discusses how taking advantage of them will require data integration and synthesis across disciplinary, organisational and international boundaries, and the formation of multi-disciplinary, international partnerships. We explore some of the institutional and policy challenges that these efforts will face, particularly how these new technologies may influence the structure and role of research for sustainable development, ownership of resources, and access and benefit sharing. We discuss potential responses to political and institutional challenges, ranging from options for enhanced structure and governance of research discovery platforms to internationally brokered benefit-sharing agreements, and identify a set of broad principles that could guide the global community as it seeks or considers solutions.

Sowing the seeds of skepticism: Russian state news and anti-GMO sentiment

ABSTRACT Biotech news coverage in English-language Russian media fits the profile of the Russian information warfare strategy described in recent military reports. This raises the question of whether Russia views the dissemination of anti-GMO information as just one of many divisive issues it can exploit as part of its information war, or if GMOs serve more expansive disruptive purposes. Distinctive patterns in Russian news provide evidence of a coordinated information campaign that could turn public opinion against genetic engineering. The recent branding of Russian agriculture as the ecologically clean alternative to genetically engineered foods is suggestive of an economic motive behind the information campaign against western biotechnologies.

Can Emerging Technologies Make a Difference in Development

to invite the private sector in, just to challenge and reduce the power of prison officers’ unions, in the interests of reform. Some of the techniques of obstruction he described (bombarding uncooperative wardens with grievances) are the very techniques employed by disgruntled prisoners: the defences of the weak, or the arts of resistance by the dominated (Scott 1990). Others are the tactics of powerful bullies. That prison officers can be both aggressors and victims (for example, of murder, organizational weakness, or of politics) is one of the social facts of imprisonment missed by critics who keep a safe distance from this kind of empirical detail. There are important and recognizable cultural insights about prison officers throughout the book: that ‘‘a person or group was either with them or against them,’’ that ‘‘they must not show weakness,’’ that ‘‘officers who do not respond to challenges . . . risk further disrespect from prisoners,’’ and that ‘‘officers who respond to challenges consistently and appropriately (using force only when it is absolutely necessary) earn reputations as generally fair people who should not be messed with’’ (p. 51). The Toughest Beat has deservedly received considerable media as well as scholarly attention. It is refreshing to read an account of prison life and policy that so effectively combines political analysis with sociological research. The most important conceptual contribution is Page’s analysis of the ‘‘penal field,’’ or penal landscape, and of change and stability within it. His account of the struggle between fields, and the various stages of transition is nuanced and informative. Setting out the ‘‘composition of the penal field,’’ in a particular place and with an important subject at its core, is a painstaking but deeply instructive task. It will inspire and guide other such studies, in other times and places. It is original, influential and makes a significant contribution to penology, political economy/sociology, criminology and social science more broadly. It has considerable theoretical and methodological significance, and is scholarly and creative. I have already pressed several colleagues and graduate students to read it. Reference