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The adoption of the shared prosperity goal by the World Bank in 2013 and Sustainable Development Goal 10, on inequality, by the United Nations in 2015 should strengthen the focus of development interventions and cooperation on the income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution. This paper contributes to the incipient literature on within-country allocations of development institutions and assesses the geographic targeting of World Bank projects to the bottom 40 percent. Bivariate correlations between the allocation of project funding approved over 2005–14 and the geographical distribution of the bottom 40 as measured by survey income or consumption data are complemented by regressions with population and other potential factors affecting the within-country allocations as controls. The correlation analysis shows that, of the 58 countries in the sample, 41 exhibit a positive correlation between the shares of the bottom 40 and World Bank funding, and, in almost half of these, the correlation is above 0.5. Slightly more than a quarter of the countries, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa, exhibit a negative correlation. The regression analysis shows that, once one controls for population, the correlation between the bottom 40 and World Bank funding switches sign and becomes significant and negative on average. This is entirely driven by Sub-Saharan Africa and not observed in the other regions. Hence, the significant and positive correlation in the estimations without controlling for population suggests that World Bank project funding is concentrated in administrative areas in which more people live (including the bottom 40) rather than in poorer administrative areas. Furthermore, capital cities receive disproportionally high shares of World Bank funding on average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canine circovirus (CanineCV) was detected, together with canine parvovirus (CPV), in samples from an outbreak of fatal gastroenteritis in dogs in Argentina. We obtained the full-length genome of this recently discovered virus by overlapping PCR, designated strain UBA-Baires. Sequence analysis revealed a highly conserved genome but also showed several unique mutations in amino acids from the capsid protein that have not been previously reported. Phylogenetic analysis shows that this strain is more closely related to European strains than to viruses detected in North America or Asia. Although the pathogenic role of CanineCV in dogs is still unclear, this study highlights the importance of CanineCV as a coinfecting virus in disease development. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the involvement of CanineCV in severe clinical disease in dogs in South America. Our results expand our information on the geographical extent of this virus and contribute to the understanding of its role in disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite considerable air pollution prevention and control measures that have been put into practice in recent years, outdoor air pollution remains one of the most important risk factors for health outcomes. To identify the potential research gaps, we conducted a scoping review focused on health outcomes affected by outdoor air pollution across the broad research area. Of the 5759 potentially relevant studies, 799 were included in the final analysis. The included studies showed an increasing publication trend from 1992 to 2008, and most of the studies were conducted in Asia, Europe, and North America. Among the eight categorized health outcomes, asthma (category: respiratory diseases) and mortality (category: health records) were the most common ones. Adverse health outcomes involving respiratory diseases among children accounted for the largest group. Out of the total included studies, 95.2% reported at least one statistically positive result, and only 0.4% showed ambiguous results. Based on our study, we suggest that the time frame of the included studies, their disease definitions, and the measurement of personal exposure to outdoor air pollution should be taken into consideration in any future research. The main limitation of this study is its potential language bias, since only English publications were included. In conclusion, this scoping review provides researchers and policy decision makers with evidence taken from multiple disciplines to show the increasing prevalence of outdoor air pollution and its adverse effects on health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hantaviruses can cause hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) in the Americas and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) in Eurasia. In recent decades, repeated outbreaks of hantavirus disease have led to public concern and have created a global public health burden. Hantavirus spillover from natural hosts into human populations could be considered an ecological process, in which environmental forces, behavioral determinants of exposure, and dynamics at the human–animal interface affect human susceptibility and the epidemiology of the disease. In this review, we summarize the progress made in understanding hantavirus epidemiology and rodent reservoir population biology. We mainly focus on three species of rodent hosts with longitudinal studies of sufficient scale: the striped field mouse (Apodemus agrarius, the main reservoir host for Hantaan virus [HTNV], which causes HFRS) in Asia, the deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus, the main reservoir host for Sin Nombre virus [SNV], which causes HPS) in North America, and the bank vole (Myodes glareolus, the main reservoir host for Puumala virus [PUUV], which causes HFRS) in Europe. Moreover, we discuss the influence of ecological factors on human hantavirus disease outbreaks and provide an overview of research perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]