Abbreviated Report of the WHO Western Pacific Region Workshop on National Plans of Action for Nutrition: Key Elements for Success, Constraints and Future Plans

A workshop on National Plans of Action for Nutrition: Constraints, Key Elements for Success, and Future Plans was convened and organized by the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific in collaboration with the Institute for Medical Research Malaysia and co sponsored with FAO and UNICEF from 25—29 October 1999. It was attended by representatives of 25 countries in the region and resource persons, representatives from WHO and other international agencies. The objectives of the workshop were to review the progress of countries in developing, implementing and monitoring national plans of action for nutrition (NPANs) in the Western Pacific Region and to identify constraints and key elements of success in these efforts. Most of the countries have NPANs, either approved and implemented or awaiting official endorsement. The Plan formulation is usually multisectoral, involving several government ministries, non governmental organizations, and international agencies. Often official adoption or endorsement of the Plan comes from the head of state and cabinet or the minister of health, one to six years from the start of its formulation. The NPAN has stimulated support for the development and implementation of nutrition projects and activities, with comparatively greater involvement of and more support from government ministries, UN agencies and non-governmental agencies compared to local communities, bilateral and private sectors and research and academic institutions. Monitoring and evaluation are important components of NPANs. They are, however, not given high priority and often not built into the plan. The role of an intersectoral coordinating body is considered crucial to a country's nutrition program. Most countries have an intersectoral structure or coordinating body to ensure the proper implementation, monitoring and evaluation of their NPANs. The workshop identified the constraints and key elements of success in each of the four stages of the NPAN process: development, operationalization, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. Constraints to the NPAN process relate to the political and socioeconomic environment, resource scarcity, control and management processes, and factors related to sustainability. The group's review of NPAN identified successful NPANs as those based on recent, adequate and good quality information on the nutritional situation of the country, and on the selection of strategies, priorities and interventions that are relevant to the country and backed up by adequate resources. Continued high level political commitment, a multisectoral approach, and adequate participation of local communities are other key elements for success. The participants agreed on future actions and support needed from various sources for the further development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of their NPANs. The recommendations for future actions were categorized into actions pertaining to countries with working NPAN, actions for countries without working NPAN and actions relevant to all countries. There was also a set of suggested actions at the regional level, such as holding of regular regional NPAN evaluation meetings, inclusion of NPAN on the agenda of regional fora by the regional organizations, and strengthening of regional nutrition networks.

Key Elements for Success in School Learning:An Analysis from the Perspective of Teachers's Caffolding

Success in school learning has attracted considerable attention in educational research.To facilitate success in school learn-ing,researchers have conducted much research on its key elements from various perspectives.Based on relevant previous research,thepaper attempts to analyse the key elements for success in school learning from the perspective of teachers' s caffolding.Two elements ofteachers' scaffolding,stimulating students' motivation for learning and teachers' knowledge related to good teaching,are illustrated.

Conceptual Framework for Key Element Identification in Important Agricultural Heritage Systems(IAHS):Case of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces System in China

With the continuous emergence of global development problems,the dynamic conservation and sustainable development of Important Agricultural Heritage Systems(IAHS)have been assigned greater importance.However,due to the complex structure,multi-component,dynamic,and open characteristics of IAHS,there are neglected problems which need to be solved in conservation practice,such as component element ambiguity,obscurity of the conservation redline,etc.This study defined the concept of key elements(KE)of IAHS,put forward a conceptual framework of KE identification,conducted empirical research by taking Honghe County of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces System(HHRTS)as an example and analyzed the level of recognition motivations for different stakeholder groups.The following conclusions were drawn:1)The KE of HHRTS are grain crops,rice species biodiversity,terrace construction and maintenance technique,Hani traditional festivals,Hani traditional foods,and virgin forest;2)The reasons behind the KE priorities of farmers,businessmen and tourists were at the micro level,the reasons of officers were at the middle level and the reasons of researchers were at the macro level.The empirical study conducted in HHRTS showed that the proposed conceptual framework could identify KE of IAHS effectively,and provided a theoretical perspective for the structuring of and essential need for IAHS research.Moreover,the KE recognition levels of different stakeholder groups reflected their potential action strategies.We should focus on the coherence of policies and measures in both the microscale and macroscale to balance the diversified demands of stakeholders,and to stimulate their enthusiasm for participation in the conservation in order to improve the management level of IAHS sites.

Arc-length technique for nonlinear finite element analysis

Nonlinear solution of reinforced concrete structures, particularly complete load-deflection response, requires tracing of the equilibrium path and proper treatment of the limit and bifurcation points. In this regard, ordinary solution techniques lead to instability near the limit points and also have problems in case of snap-through and snap-back. Thus they fail to predict the complete load-displacement response. The arc-length method serves the purpose well in principle, received wide acceptance in finite element analysis, and has been used extensively. However modifications to the basic idea are vital to meet the particular needs of the analysis. This paper reviews some of the recent developments of the method in the last two decades, with particular emphasis on nonlinear finite element analysis of reinforced concrete structures.

Data mining to effect of key alloying elements on corrosion resistance of low alloy steels in Sanya seawater environmentAlloying Elements

In this paper,the relationship model between seawater environment,chemical composition and corrosion potential of low alloy steel is established and the distribution of corrosion potential of low alloy steel with changes in key alloying elements is excavated.The research was carried out with the following steps:Firstly,the relationship model between corrosion potential of low alloy steel and its influencing factors was established by data dimension reduction and artificial neural network(ANN).Secondly,key alloying elements of experimental steels were selected out by Pearson correlation analysis,then the corrosion resistance element model was visualized to show the effect of key alloying elements on corrosion potential of low alloy steel.Finally,corrosion potential of low alloy steel with the change of key alloying elements was classified and visualized by classification method.The mining results can reflect the validity of the proposed mining methods to a certain extent and provide an intuitive data basis for the development of high-quality and low-cost low alloy steels.

Reliability Estimations of Control Systems Effected by Several Interference Sources

In order to establish the sufficient and necessary condition that arbitrarily reliable systems can not be constructed with function elements under interference sources, it is very important to expand set of interference sources with the above property. In this paper, the models of two types of interference sources are raised respectively: interference source possessing real input vectors and constant reliable interference source. We study the reliability of the systems effected by the interference sources, and the lower bound of the reliability is presented. The results show that it is impossible that arbitrarily reliable systems can not be constructed with the elements effected by above interference sources.