The criminal court is supposed to be a place of adversarial justice; however, these formal legal values do not appear to translate into practice. The courtroom workgroup, though made up of formal adversaries with widely divergent roles and objectives, is a community of workers whose shared interests include getting through the day as quickly and efficiently as possible. Using data from 142 days of bail court observation in Ontario the author argues that a “culture of adjournment” has taken over the bail process. Rather than the court being run by an efficient adversarial group of people processing criminal cases through the system, the courtroom has developed a culture that emphasizes the importance of expeditiously disposing of the daily docket over distributing justice.

Quick Response Programs (QRP) have been instituted to contain hospital costs by reducing unnecessary hospital admissions through the prompt co-ordination of Home Care Services. No formal economic evaluation of the impact of this redirection of services has been conducted. This paper describes a randomized controlled trial designed to compare the costs and effects between comparable emergency department patients (ED) serviced by the QRP versus the usual department services. Patients were assessed at baseline and 10 days following discharge from the ED specifically for their health status, caregiver burden, satisfaction with health care services and expenditures. QRP was an acceptable alternative to ED services for a small percentage of patients and was not more expensive in total care costs although there was a shift in expenditures from hospital to Home Care services. Due to the small sample size the power to detect the clinically important differences in health status was 60 per cent.

Physicians (N = 803) were contacted via postal survey and given two sets of efficacy measures for drug treatments in Alzheimer's disease: (a) the time that patients spend in a mild or moderate state of disease; (b) levels of modification to disease progression in the areas of cognition, behaviour, and mood, and ability to perform basic activities of daily living. Physicians reported that they would prescribe a hypothetical, new Alzheimer's disease medication if it would allow patients to remain in their current disease state for 15 (mild) or 11 (moderate) additional months. Most physicians required a permanent halt to, or some reversal of, disease progression as a prerequisite for prescribing; a few required substantial reversal. More stringent efficacy requirements were negatively associated with physicians' current prescribing of cholinesterase inhibitors to persons with Alzheimer's disease, although the effects were either small (odds ratio = 0.99) or not statistically significant at the 5 per cent level. The results suggest that physicians with stringent efficacy requirements for clinically relevant efficacy measures are less likely to prescribe cholinesterase inhibitors.

The duality between measures of economic and technical efficiency has been extensively studied in the productive efficiency analysis. This duality ensures a meaningful interpretation of technical efficiency as economic efficiency evaluated at the most favorable shadow prices. This paper concentrates on economic efficiency as short run profit efficiency. We first argue that a modified version of Varian's goodness-of-fit measure provides an appropriate economic efficiency measure in that context. Next, we show that a variant of the McFadden gauge function provides a natural dual efficiency measure for this short run profit efficiency measure. In particular, we establish two attractive properties of that technical efficiency measure: (i) it can be interpreted as Varian's profit efficiency measure evaluated at shadow prices; (ii) it provides an upper bound for profit efficiency

Introduction. This protocol aims at evaluating (a) the efficacy of new fungicides for the control of post-harvest diseases, (b) the efficacy of various application methods for the chemical control of post-harvest diseases, and (c) the quality of the fungicide solution during the same packing day where this solution is recycled. The principle, key advantages, starting plant material, time required and expected results are presented. Materials and methods. Materials required and details of the eighteen steps of the protocol (fruit sampling and inoculum preparation, wound anthracnose study, quiescent anthracnose study, and crown-rot study) are described. Results. Comparison between untreated control bananas and bananas treated with fungicide allows the calculation of the fungicide treatment efficacy.

Introduction. L’acarien Oligonychus afrasiaticus, localement appelé « Boufaroua », est un ravageur des palmeraies algériennes. Pour se nourrir, il pique les dattes qui se dessèchent ensuite en fin de maturité et deviennent impropres à la commercialisation et à la consommation humaine. Des pertes économiques importantes sont alors enregistrées. Les dégâts les plus spectaculaires ont été notés sur la variété Deglet-Nour à haute valeur marchande. Matériel et méthodes. Le taux d’infestation des arbres d’une palmeraie de la région d’Ouargla a été évalué. Quatre stades phénologiques ont été considérés. Une coccinelle très vorace, Stethorus punctillum, a été récoltée dans six palmeraies puis lâchée sur des arbres expérimentaux afin de vérifier son efficacité prédatrice sur le « Boufaroua ». Résultats. L’infestation des arbres a été très variable et a augmenté au fur et à mesure de la maturité des dattes. L’efficacité de la coccinelle lâchée a été significative, et cela a été d’autant plus constaté que les arbres étaient fortement infestés. Discussion et conclusion. Stethorus punctillum joue un rôle important dans le contrôle de l’acarien O. afrasiaticus. D’autres prédateurs seraient toutefois présents en Algérie ; ils devront être testés afin d’établir une méthode de lutte biologique apte à protéger suffisamment les palmeraies contre O. afrasiaticus.

A one-year longitudinal study was conducted in 92 smallholder diary farms in Kwale district of Kenya, to evaluate the efficacy of Spot-on® (a 10 % deltamethrin pour-on) in the control of East Coast fever, anaplasmosis, babesiosis and trypanosomosis. A comparison of the annual incidence and mortality rates from these diseases was made among four Spot-on® application regimes: biweekly, monthly, bimonthly and untreated control groups. The incidence of East Coast fever, ranging from 2.6 to 6.8% among the treated animals, was significantly lower than in the control group (18.8%). Anaplasmosis incidence ranged from 2.6 to 13.5%, but the differences among the treatments were not statistically significant. There were only seven confirmed cases of babesiosis and therefore no statistical comparisons of the incidence rates were made. The incidence rates of trypanosomosis in the biweekly- (28.2 %) and monthly-treated animals (38.6 %) were statistically lower than in the bimonthly (63.9 %) and control groups (72.6 %). It was concluded that monthly application of Spoton® could significantly reduce the incidence of tick-borne diseases and trypanosomosis in cattle in the coastal lowlands.

La littérature récente sur l’articulation chômage-éducation a pour propriétés que l’effort éducatif (i) croît avec le taux de sortie du chômage et (ii) a des rendements croissants en raison d’une externalité positive. Le rôle de l’Etat consiste alors à inciter les agents à accroître l’intensité de leur formation pour réduire le taux de chômage et augmenter le flux de richesses produites. Ces propriétés contre intuitives sont liées au rôle de l’éducation qui consiste à accroître la productivité de ceux à qui elle est dispensée. Dans cet article, l’éducation est modélisée comme une durée et rend celui qui l’entreprend plus polyvalent au sens où maîtrise un plus grand nombre de technologies équiproductives. L’effort individuel décroît alors avec le taux de sortie du chômage et croît avec l’effort collectif en raison d’une externalité négative. Au niveau macroéconomique, la durée d’éducation privée est systématiquement trop élevée au regard d’une durée socialement optimale. La politique éducative de second rang consiste à réduire l’effort éducatif des agents lorsque le taux de chômage est « haut », et à l’augmenter lorsqu’il est « bas ».

Insect pest problems on cowpeas can be reduced by use of strategies which involve ecological manipulations. These include crop diversification (mixed cropping, etc.), alteration of planting dates, crop rotation, trap-cropping and weed control. The merits of these cultural methods of pest control are discussed.

The status of biological control of cowpea pests is still low but promising. The crop is an annual and therefore offers very limited possibilities for the application of the classical biological control techniques. However, a large number of parasitic Hymenoptera, Diptera and predatory Hemiptera, notably Reduviids have been identified in the cowpea ecosystem. Ecological studies of some of these have been carried out and levels of parasitism determined in a few cases, but their significance in the dynamics of cowpea pest populations have not been fully established.

It is however known that conservation of parasites and predators in their wild environment is one of the traditional biological control methods. Therefore, a rationalized pesticide programme for the control of cowpea pests should aim at preventing hazards to their natural enemies so as to increase their biocontrol efficiency.

Depuis 1975, 15 nouveaux antidépresseurs ont été commercialisés en France. Nous avons voulu étudier leurs caractéristiques pharmacocinétiques et les comparer à celles des antidépresseurs plus anciens.

Il faut tout d'abord noter que, bien que de structure chimique plus hétérogène que leurs prédécesseurs, ces produits possèdent tous une ou plusieurs méthodes de dosage dans le plasma, en général chromatographique.

D’un tableau regroupant les caractéristiques pharmacocinétiques, après dose unique, et après doses répétées de ces antidépresseurs de deuxième génération, nous concluons qu’ils sont peu différents à ce point de vue des antidépresseurs de première génération. Nous remarquons seulement la plus grande rapidité d‘absorption et la demi-vie plus brève de certains nouveaux produits.

De l'ensemble des études portant sur des populations particulières (personnes âgées, insuffisants rénaux, malades déprimés), il est possible de déduire quelques informations importantes concernant l‘utilisation pratique de ces produits.

The efficacy of natural embelin isolated from berries of Embelia ribes Burm. against Tribolium castaneum Herbst is discussed. Embelin mixed with wheat samples at concentrations of 0.1875% and above exhibited high efficacy by bringing about adult mortality even after 8 months of storage. Productivity (progeny/adult-day) of the test insect was also reduced significantly in treatments as compared to controls at different intervals of storage. After 8 months of storage, significant reduction in F1, progeny at the lowest concentration was mainly due to larvicidal action of embelin. In the present study, embelin did not exhibit any chemosterilant action or contact toxicity to adult beetles. Germination of wheat treated with embelin even at the highest concentration of 0.750% was not impaired to any significant extent.