Discussion Paper

Cloud computing is widely recognised as a mean for bringing cost savings and better utilisation of resources to the IT departments and their limited budgets. Cloud computing, where IT is delivered as an on-demand pay-per-use service, is rapidly evolving from a hype to a serious alternative to traditional IT procurement. This development is vastly driven by big international players. If the Nordic region is to influence and gain from this development it is essential that the Nordic governments act now. This report sets the scene for a common understanding of the notion of cloud computing across the Nordic region. The report offers a list of recommendations for key action points where cooperation across the Nordic region will be beneficial in order to establish the Nordic region as a driving force for cloud computing in the public sector.

This is an open access book. The book provides an overview of the state of research in developing countries – Africa, Latin America, and Asia (especially India) and why research and publications are important in these regions. It addresses budding but struggling academics in low and middle-income countries. It is written mainly by senior colleagues who have experienced and recognized the challenges with design, documentation, and publication of health research in the developing world. The book includes short chapters providing insight into planning research at the undergraduate or postgraduate level, issues related to research ethics, and conduct of clinical trials. It also serves as a guide towards establishing a research question and research methodology. It covers important concepts such as writing a paper, the submission process, dealing with rejection and revisions, and covers additional topics such as planning lectures and presentations. The book will be useful for graduates, postgraduates, teachers as well as physicians and practitioners all over the developing world who are interested in academic medicine and wish to do medical research.

The Sociology Writer's Guide is designed to help sociology students at any level complete their writing assignments, and strengthen their research and bibliographic skills. Covers every kind of writing assignment a sociology student is likely to encounter: term papers, research papers, essays, compare/contrast papers, quantitative and qualitative research articles, text analysis papers, book reviews, abstracts, and essay exams. Teaches a practical, step-by-step approach to writing, from selecting a topic to submitting finished work. Uses Tips, Notes, and Reminders to highlight key points. Includes a complete list of examples for handling quotes and paraphrases, and for using citations and references in current sociological documentation style. Features a full discussion of bias-free language that covers race/ethnicity, social class, age, disability, religion, family status, and sexual orientation. The author is a sociology instructor, writer, and editor who has taught a writing for sociology class for over 12 years.

Many development programs that aim to alleviate poverty and improve investments in human capital consider women’s empowerment a key pathway by which to achieve impact and often target women as their main beneficiaries. Despite this, women’s empowerment dimensions are often not rigorously measured and are at times merely assumed. This paper starts by reflecting on the concept and measurement of women’s empowerment and then reviews some of the structural interventions that aim to influence underlying gender norms in society and eradicate gender discrimination. It then proceeds to review the evidence of the impact of three types of interventions—cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs—on women’s empowerment, nutrition, or both. Qualitative evidence on conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs generally points to positive impacts on women’s empowerment, although quantitative research findings are more heterogenous. CCT programs produce mixed results on long-term nutritional status, and very limited evidence exists of their impacts on micronutrient status. The little evidence available on unconditional cash transters (UCT) indicates mixed impacts on women’s empowerment and positive impacts on nutrition; however, recent reviews comparing CCT and UCT programs have found little difference in terms of their effects on stunting and they have found that conditionality is less important than other factors, such as access to healthcare and child age and sex. Evidence of cash transfer program impacts depending on the gender of the transfer recipient or on the conditionality is also mixed, although CCTs with non-health conditionalities seem to have negative impacts on nutritional status. The impacts of programs based on the gender of the transfer recipient show mixed results, but almost no experimental evidence exists of testing gender-differentiated impacts of a single program. Agricultural interventions—specifically home gardening and dairy projects—show mixed impacts on women’s empowerment measures such as time, workload, and control over income; but they demonstrate very little impact on nutrition. Implementation modalities are shown to determine differential impacts in terms of empowerment and nutrition outcomes. With regard to the impact of microfinance on women’s empowerment, evidence is also mixed, although more recent reviews do not find any impact on women’s empowerment. The impact of microfinance on nutritional status is mixed, with no evidence of impact on micronutrient status. Across all three types of programs (cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs), very little evidence exists on pathways of impact, and evidence is often biased toward a particular region. The paper ends with a discussion of the findings and remaining evidence gaps and an outline of recommendations for research.